


Veritas

by writer_slk



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Communication Failure, Communication Triumph, F/M, Happy Ending, Identity Reveal, LadyNoir - Freeform, Misdirected Love Confessions, accidental reveal, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2019-11-26 20:02:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18185105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writer_slk/pseuds/writer_slk
Summary: The latest akumatized villain is filling the mouths of its victims with criticisms and complaints. If left unchecked, every relationship in Paris will be put at risk.While Ladybug and Chat Noir are trying to stop the villain, Ladybug learns something about her partner that she didn’t want to know and then says something she didn’t mean to say.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an "episode-style" story. It'd probably fit in well in Season 1 or early Season 2. 
> 
> Let it be known that I wrote this nine months ago. You'll understand later why I'm pointing this out.

The bell rang and class was dismissed. Marinette Dupain-Cheng leaned over to put her book in her bag. As always, she took the moment to sneak a glance at Adrien Agreste, the boy who sat one row ahead of her.

 _Adrien_. She sighed dreamily.

Adrien was putting his things in his own bag, and when he was done, he stood up, picked up his bag, and walked toward the classroom door. He didn’t notice Marinette’s gaze. He never did.

With a silly grin on her face, Marinette sat up and – BANG! Her head hit the table. There was a muffled guffawing over shoulder as she sat up, rubbing the sore spot.

“ _Alya_ ,” Marinette said, her voice a mix of reproach and sheepishness.

“I’m sorry, girl,” her friend and seatmate replied. “But you’ve done this staring-after-Adrien-as-he-leaves ritual _all year long_. I thought you had at least figured out that the table is always going to be right there when you sit up. You’re okay, right?”

“ _Yes_. I think so.”

Alya smirked, shook her head, and clapped her hand on Marinette’s shoulder affectionately. Marinette couldn’t help but smile. Since the beginning of the school year, her friend had patiently endured both Marinette’s crush and Marinette’s zero percent success rate when it came to stringing together a coherent sentence around Adrien. Alya’s long-suffering was something Marinette greatly appreciated.

“Marinette!” a voice behind them squealed, and Marinette and Alya both turned to see a group of girls from their class congregating next to their table. “Are you going to make it to the movie with us this evening?”

“I really wish I could, Rose,” Marinette replied. “But my parents asked me to work in the bakery after school today to help with their big promotion.”

A buy-one-get-one-free promotion on pastries? Busy barely began to describe the state of the bakery. Her parents had been awake late the previous night, had awoken early that morning, and were expecting a steady stream of customers from 5:00 PM until the shop closed for the night.

“Hmm, what if I told you _Adrien_ was coming to the movie?” Alya asked, giving Marinette a knowing look.

“ _Adrien?_ ” Marinette squeaked. “Let me talk to my parents again. Maybe I could leave a little early and show up at the movie a little late! Is Adrien really going to be there?”

Alya smirked. “Of course not, Marinette. It’s a _girls’_ evening out. I just couldn’t resist seeing the look on your face.”

* * *

“Marinette, would you please take that pan out of the oven?” Marinette’s father called over his shoulder before turning his head back to face the bowl of egg yolks. In his hand, he wielded a whisk.

Marinette obliged, opening the oven and feeling the familiar blast of heat against her face before reaching in with a mitted hand, removing the tray of choux, and setting it out on the waiting cooling rack.

“Thank you,” her father called without turning from his work. Marinette smiled, then leaned over to pick up a chocolate-coated bowl and spoon that her father had set aside. She took them to the sink full of hot, soapy water and began to scrub them clean.

As Marinette worked, she watched her mother help a customer at the cash register.  

“Thank you, Mr. Herve,” her mother said, smiling up at the man on the other side of the counter as she gave him his change. Then… “Wait.”

She opened the back of the display case and took out another macaron identical to the one she had already given him. “Our buy-one-get-one-free promotion isn’t supposed to begin for another 10 minutes, but for such a loyal customer, we’ll make an exception.” She opened his bag and dropped the macaron inside.

Mr. Herve smiled in pleasant surprise. “Well, thank you, Mrs. Cheng,” he said, tipping his hat. “Good luck with your promotion. I’ll tell my friends!” He left the bakery humming a little tune, opening his bag to slip the unexpected cookie out and take a bite.

“Please do!” Marinette’s mother called after him. As Marinette wiped the bowl dry with a towel, her mother turned away from the register to face the kitchen. Her eyes landed on something beyond Marinette, and her smile became radiant.

Marinette turned her head to sneak a peek in the other direction to see what her mother saw. Her father was there, holding the bowl of tempered egg yolk above a simmering pan on the stovetop. He whisked steadily as the yolk drained into the bowl, but his eyes were not on his task. He was smiling back at his wife, lost in deep admiration.

Marinette turned her face back toward the sink and scrubbed the spoon for much longer than necessary, but in a pleased way, her heart soaring. She didn’t even mind that she was missing time with her girlfriends to help her parents in the bakery. Being with her parents, the two happiest people she knew, was no chore.

As Marinette wiped the spoon dry, she snuck another glance at her father. She turned away to put the spoon back in the drawer, then did a double-take.

“Dad, the egg bowl!”

“Huh? Oh!” Her father looked toward the bowl in his hand, which was now empty, and Marinette reached to take it from him. Her grasp was not as tight as she anticipated, not with her soapy hands. The bowl slipped from her fingers.

Her father reacted quickly, his arm flailing downward to block the bowl's descent. The bowl glanced off, changed directions slightly, and continued to fall.

The short delay, though, had been enough to allow Marinette’s mother to dart across the kitchen and get her hand beneath the bowl. She caught it firmly, and all three members of the family exhaled in relief.

Marinette took the bowl from her mother – more carefully this time – and carried it to the sink. Not long after she had washed it, dried it and put it away, her father placed the mixture he’d been working on into the refrigerator.

“That wraps up tomorrow’s prep work for now,” he said, wiping his forearm across his brow. “There will be more to do after the shop closes, of course, but for now we can just start waiting for the customers to arrive.” He eyed the remaining dishes that still needed washed and the floor that had flour and sugar spilled on it from his earnest baking.

Marinette’s mother walked over with a smile and put a hand on his back. “You go take a break, Tom. Marinette and I will handle washing the dishes and sweeping the floors.”

Marinette nodded in agreement, and her father smiled at them both. “Thank you, my dears.”

He laid a hand on Marinette’s shoulder as he passed her, surprisingly gentle, then reached behind his back to untie his apron and hang it on a peg as he walked through the door to the living area above the bakery.

Marinette began collecting the remaining dishes from her father’s work and carried them to the suds in the sink as her mother took the broom down and began to sweep.

Marinette couldn’t imagine life any other way. She wondered what it would be like if her family was more like Alya’s, with her mother and father working entirely different jobs, both of which were away from the family’s apartment. Not that that was a _bad_ thing, but Marinette thought she’d miss the cozy closeness of having her tight-knit family together as much as she did now.

“Mom?” Marinette said suddenly, struck by a sudden question she had never before thought to ask.

“Yes, dear?”

“Do you like working in a bakery?”

“Hmm. I like working in this bakery.”

Marinette smiled, but she found the answer oddly evasive. “Do you think you’d like working in another bakery?” she pressed.

“I don’t know, dear. I’ve never tried it. I’m sure there would be things I could enjoy no matter where I was working. Why are you asking?”

“It’s part of a school project I’m supposed to do.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. Her class had weekly public speaking assignments where they spoke in front of the class about various topics. True, the assignment to talk about their parents’ jobs had been _last_ week, but her mother didn’t need to know that.

The bell on the front door of the bakery rang, indicating that a customer had just walked in. “We’ll finish your interview later this evening then, Marinette. I think we’re about to be busy.”

* * *

A woman in a business suit walked to the front door of a townhouse-style apartment. She was carrying a purse on one shoulder and a long white cardigan over the other arm. She was pretty, but her make-up did not completely hide the dark circles under her eyes. She took a set of keys out of her purse and fumbled with them before inserting one into the lock and turning it with a soft click.

Her name was Verity, a wife for seven years and a mother of two. And the moment she walked in, she knew something wasn’t right.

“Alice?” she called for her three-year-old. “Margot?” she called for her baby.

No one responded.

She checked the clock and licked her lips. Her husband, Quentin, should have been home thirty minutes ago, and he was the one who usually picked the girls up from their sitter.

She walked slowly, failing to notice when her cardigan slid from her arms into a heap at the bottom of the stairs. It lay in a jumbled heap right below the family portrait of Quentin with his dark hair and distant expression; her bright, pigtailed Alice with dark, laughing eyes and a smile that could light up a room; and little Margot, who had only been a red-faced newborn when the picture had been taken.

She was vaguely aware of her heart thudding in her chest as she made her way to the bedroom. She knew what she’d find before she got there: the half-emptied closet and the empty bureau drawers. Even her husband’s toothbrush was gone from the bathroom counter.

With dull sickness creeping into her stomach and leaving an acidic taste in her mouth, she fumbled through her purse for her cell phone. She noticed now that she had a missed text from the babysitter. It read, “Quentin hasn’t come to pick up Alice and Margot yet. Was he going to be late today?”

Verity sat on the floor heavily. _The girls,_ she thought dully. What was she going to tell the girls?

She buried one hand in her thick hair for a moment. With painful detachment, she picked up the phone again, scrolled through the contacts list, and placed a call.

Marion was Verity’s best friend and knew exactly what Verity had been through. She knew that Quentin had dropped a bombshell on her three weeks ago when he had told her he had filed for a divorce. She knew that Verity had been shocked to find out that Quentin harbored a lot of unspoken resentments, and that Verity had begged him to be more open so that they could work through the issues and avoid the divorce. She knew Quentin had said he would stay, but that he hadn’t exactly opened up yet.

When Marion answered the phone, Verity was surprised by how calmly she was able to speak.

“Marion? It’s Quentin…. No, no, he’s not—I mean, I guess he’s fine. But Marion, he’s gone… Yes, _gone_ gone… How do I know? His stuff is gone, and he hasn’t picked up the children—”

And suddenly Verity’s emotional control shattered into thousand pieces.

“Oh Marion, the children! How could he do this to _them_?... They’re at the sitter’s still. I have to go pick them up—”

She sobbed into the phone as her friend spoke to her urgently.

“Verity, you just stay at your house. I’ll call Charlotte and ask her to pick up Alice and Margot and take them to our house. Once I’ve got that taken care of, I’ll come right over, okay?”

Verity barely managed to get an affirmative response out through choking sobs. She hung up the phone, still clinging to it as she drew her knees to her chest and hugged them tightly, burying her face in them as she sobbed.

She thought about her girls. She thought about Alice, who had always been a daddy’s girl, and if Quentin didn’t love _Verity_ , then fine, but how could he do this to _Alice_? And she thought about little Margot, who had just celebrated her birthday by taking her first two steps the weekend before.

She didn’t notice the butterfly that came in through the window, flitting about her face before flying out of her bedroom and down the stairs. But a moment later, she was not frightened to see the masked face of a man in her head or to hear him speak in a deep, powerful voice.

“Veritas, I am Hawk Moth,” he said. “You’ve been wronged and so badly hurt by this worm of a man who is too cowardly to confront you with his feelings. I will give you the ability to make people confront others with their negative opinions so that all of Paris can stop living their lives in a lie. I will also give you the power to create an army to protect you on your quest for truth and for revenge against your husband. But you must bring me something in return: The Miraculous of Ladybug and Chat Noir.”

“Yes, Hawk Moth,” she agreed, basking in the full fire of fury and righteous vengeance.

* * *

When Marion reached Verity’s house, she didn’t knock. She just opened the door and walked in.

“Verity?” No response. She saw the sweater lying on the floor near the steps, so she started up. As she reached the top of the stairs she was startled by the figure that glided out of a hallway just off the top of the stairs.

“ _Verity?_ ” she said again, more incredulous this time.

She recognized the face, but it was clear that her friend was not herself. Her hair was pulled back tightly into a severe bun without a single strand out of place. Her stern face was set into an expression of contempt. Verity’s natural complexion was rather pale, but it was the most colorful thing about her now; her clothing was all pure white and was fitted with white plates of armor all over, except at the joints. In her hand, she wielded a white sword.

She stood on a white hoverboard which glided above the floor and smoothly down the staircase toward Marion, stopping just a few meters away.

Marion gaped, unsure what to say.

“Speak the truth!” Verity commanded, and she picked up the sword and pointed it toward Marion’s heart. A blue bolt shot from the tip of the blade and hit Marion in the chest.

“Verity.” It was the third time she had said the word since she entered the house, but her tone had changed entirely. She was no longer pleading or even concerned. She was annoyed. “Look, I know that you’re tense because of things with Quentin. And I completely agree that you have been treated unfairly.”

Veritas’ lip curled upward in what could have been a look of pleasure or a sneer; it was hard to say.

Marion continued. “But can I just say that it’s kind of a pain to be your friend right now? You called me at a bad time, but how would you know? You didn’t really ask if I had a few minutes before you started talking. And Charlotte has a ton of homework this weekend since she put off her history paper until the last minute _again_. She doesn’t really have time to babysit right now. Actually, I was wondering if you might be willing to pay—”

Veritas’ sneer had changed into a clear scowl. She pointed her sword again and commanded, “To me!” This time, it was a green bolt that hit Marion’s chest.

Marion stopped speaking mid-sentence, and a thick cloud enveloped her momentarily before it dispersed. Marion’s appearance now matched Veritas’, with a tight bun, armored clothing, a sword, and a hoverboard. But, instead of white, her clothes, weapon, and hoverboard were all green.

“I seek my husband and my revenge,” Veritas said to Marion, but she immediately found Hawk Moth back inside her head.

“You can have your revenge, Veritas, but only _after_ you face Ladybug and Chat Noir and bring me their Miraculous!” he reminded her.

Veritas’ lips curled again, and then she wordlessly flew up and over Marion’s head. She paused at the bottom of the steps to pick up her white cardigan, which she put on before floating out the front door.

Marion turned wordlessly and followed her.

* * *

“Good-bye! Thank you for coming!”

Marinette smiled and waved from the register at the last departing bakery guests, who smiled and waved back with mouths stuffed too full for polite talking.

“Whew!” she sighed as she turned to her parents, who stood in the kitchen leaning against the counters. They looked as tired as she felt. _More so_ , she thought, remembering her parents’ late night and early morning.

“That went well!” Marinette’s father said to no one in particular once the door had shut.

“It went _very_ well, dear,” her mother agreed pleasantly. “You are very talented and it’s no surprise that the customer’s respond well to what you do.”

“But it was _your_ idea, Sabine.”

“It takes _both_ of you to pull off something like this,” Marinette said with a smile.

“Actually, it takes _all_ of us,” her father replied, holding out an arm toward Marinette who fell into it to accept a one-armed hug. “I couldn’t make the bakery succeed without both my girls!”

After a moment, he let go of Marinette, straightening up to put his full weight on his feet with only a small grimace before heading toward the cabinet at the back of the store where the cleaning supplies were kept. “Let’s get this place cleaned up so we can eat dinner and go to bed.”

There were murmurs of assent all around.

Marinette’s father grabbed a spray bottle and clean rag to wipe down the outside windows while her mother grabbed a stiff-bristled broom to sweep the sidewalk. The two of them walked through the lobby and out the front door.

Marinette grabbed a second broom and headed to the lobby to start sweeping.

She was just carrying her first dustpan full of debris to the garbage can when something down the street caught her eye. She looked up and dropped the dustpan, letting it fall to the floor.

Down the street and rapidly approaching, there was a white-clad figure. The figure carried a sword, which it pointed ominously toward citizens who ran fearfully from it.

Marinette started toward the front door when there came the loud thud of something banging hard against the bakery window. She turned to see a man’s back pressed up against the glass. Marinette gazed in horror at the way his clothes and skin pressed tightly against the glass, pushing as if he hoped he would push himself _through_ it and into the safety of the indoors.

In the street, the white-clad figure leveled her sword toward the cowering man. Her hoverboard continued to glide smoothly ahead, and the figure turned evenly to maintain her aim.

Then, as Marinette watched, a green bolt of light suddenly shot from the tip of the sword, hitting the man. He was immediately enveloped in a thick, purplish cloud, and for a second, Marinette could not see what was happening. Suddenly, the cloud dispersed as quickly as it had formed. The man was gone. In his place was a figure that looked just like the white-clad one, except his clothes and weapon were all green.

Marinette took a step back, sure that this green-clad figure would turn around and see her through the window, but he paid no attention to her at all. He turned and floated over to join the white-clad figure, which was just now approaching the front of the bakery…

Marinette dashed to the door and flung it open.

“Mom! Dad! Get in quick!” she shouted.

Her parents looked up, their faces a mixture of confusion and surprise until the white-clad figure rounded the corner. Marinette’s blood ran cold. The figure was staring directly and impassively at her parents. She raised her sword and pointed it toward them.

“Speak the truth!” the figure commanded.

“No!” Marinette screamed. She reached out to grab her mother’s arm and pull her to safety, but she was too late. A blue bolt shot out from the sword’s tip and hit her mother squarely in the chest. The figure flicked her sword ever so slightly, and now it was pointed at Marinette.

“Speak the truth!” the figure commanded again, in a voice precisely the same as it had used before.

Her father moved fast for a man his size. He spread out his arms and in two quick steps, he put his body between the figure and the bakery door. Marinette just barely saw a bolt of blue leave the sword tip before her father’s body obscured her view, but she heard him gasp and knew that the blue energy had sunk into him.

“Dad!”

The white and green figures moved on, unphased by the scene unfolding in front of the bakery.

“Dad?” Marinette gasped again, even as she pulled her mother into the bakery. As her mother stumbled through the bakery door, Marinette registered the fact that her mother was moving under her own power, and she took a small measure of comfort from that. _Whatever that bolt did_ , Marinette thought, _it doesn’t seem like it caused any major injury_.

“It’s—I think it’s okay, Marinette. I feel fine,” Marinette’s father gasped as he backed his way into the bakery. Once inside, he slammed the door shut and locked it. “Maybe it missed me.”

Marinette shook her head. She was sure that the bolt had not missed her father, but she didn’t argue.

“Mom, what about you? Are you okay?” Marinette appraised her mother anxiously.

“Yes, I’m fine too,” her mother said, dusting off her blouse as though it had somehow gotten dirty, although Marinette saw nothing on it. “It didn’t hurt at all. In fact, I didn’t feel anything.”

“Well, clearly, it’s another akumatized villain,” said Marinette, peering through the windows for one last look at the group that was gliding away down the street. “Whatever it did to you, it can’t be good.”

“Yes,” her father agreed. But then his voice took on a firm, matter-of-fact tone. “But that’s not any of our concern. I’m sure Ladybug and Chat Noir will be along soon to take care of it.”

Marinette smiled and started to agree, but her father wasn’t done.

“In the meantime, young lady, you need to think about your homework.”

Marinette blinked, a little disoriented by the sudden change of topic. She wondered whether her father was trying to make a joke to lighten the mood.

“Homework?” she said with a small, nervous giggle.

“I’m tired of you treating your school work so frivolously,” Tom said, more severely than Marinette ever remembered hearing him speak before. Marinette felt her mouth drop open, not even sure where to begin with a response.

“Tom,” her mother’s voice cut in, high-pitched and scolding, causing Marinette to flinch. “Don’t be so harsh with Marinette.”

“What do you mean ‘harsh’, Sabine?” Her father’s voice sounded irritated now. “I am not being _harsh_. I’m trying to teach my daughter something about discipline. It’s for her own good.”

Marinette swiveled her head to look back at her mother, whose warm smile was gone, leaving her looking not at all good-natured.

“Honestly, Tom, if you were that concerned about her schoolwork, you probably wouldn’t ask her to help out in the bakery so much.”

Marinette noted the hint of mockery in her mother’s voice on the word “Tom”. Her father’s name had never sounded so disrespected coming from her mother’s mouth.

Marinette gulped.

“Uh, guys?” She grabbed her purse, which was hanging on a peg on the wall. “I think I’ll go see about that homework right away!”

She ran up the stairs, not forgetting to grab an extra cookie as she went. The second she closed the door to her room, Tikki flew out of the purse.

“What did those energy bolts do to your parents, Marinette?” Tikki asked.

“I’m not sure, but Ladybug is about to take care of it.”

* * *

In the Agreste mansion, Adrien sat at the end of the long dining room table. As usual, he was alone.

He picked at his food, hoping that if he prolonged the meal long enough, his father really would join him soon, like he had promised.

Adrien chewed each bite as many times as he could reasonably do so. While he chewed, he drew patterns in the sauce on his plate with his fork and watched as it oozed back together to erase the lines almost as quickly as he could make them.

The door opened, and Adrien jumped at the unexpected noise. He lost control of the fork and it dropped, missing the plate entirely and clattering onto the table.

He looked up tensely, eagerly anticipating his father’s reprimand, but the person at the door was not his father. It was Nathalie. Adrien chose to ignore the dropped fork as he looked up at her expectantly.

“Your father’s meeting is running late, Adrien. He expects it to go for several more hours. He asked me to wish you a good night.”

Adrien dropped his gaze back down to his plate and beat back the disappointment that threatened to make his eyes well up with tears.

“Typical,” he muttered. He should have known it was too good to be true when his father had said he would spend the evening with him, even on such a day as today. His father had said he would clear his calendar from dinnertime onward; now he wasn’t even expecting to see his son at all before bedtime.

Nathalie said nothing before turning to retreat through the same door from which she had entered.

“Wait, Nathalie,” Adrien called. She paused and half-turned back around to face him.

“Would— would you stay with me? Eat dinner—?” His voice trailed off and he gestured somewhat pathetically toward the table. “I just don’t want to eat alone right now. Tonight. On Mom’s birthday.”

He realized suddenly how stupid his request was, and he immediately wished he could take it back. _Eating dinner with Nathalie might be slightly less lonely,_ he thought, _but it would also be about a thousand times more awkward._

Fortunately, he didn’t have to suffer the consequence of his rash invitation.

“I’m sorry, Adrien,” was all she said before turning back and leaving the room.

Frustrated, disappointed, and embarrassed, Adrien pulled out his phone for company. He felt a tiny thrill to see a missed message. It was from Nino. Missed, because his phone had been purposely silenced in preparation for the evening.

Adrien turned the volume back up and opened the message, glad for a distraction.

“Dude, stay indoors. Another akuma attack **,”** it read.

Adrien pushed back from the table quickly. In his haste, his hand hit his fork, knocking it to the floor. He didn’t bother to pick it up. His focus was now entirely on his phone.

He checked the timestamp of Nino’s message and was relieved to see it had come just a moment earlier.

He hunched over his phone intently, and with a few taps, he brought up a live news report. It only took a few seconds for him to get his bearings. The footage was coming from a place just a few blocks away. He watched as the white-clad figure glided down the street, throwing blue and green bolts at citizens who ran screaming for cover.

He didn’t see what the bolts were doing to the people who were hit, but he didn’t need to. He recognized one of Hawk Moth’s akumas when he saw it.

He rose from his chair, swiping a piece of camembert from a serving plate on the table as he took off for his room.  

For some insane reason, he found himself wondering whether he should pick up the fork and push in his chair before he left, but then he felt a twinge of satisfaction to think that leaving those details unattended might underscore the fact that he had left his dinner abruptly, as if it had been in anger.


	2. Chapter 2

Ladybug leapt from the bakery’s rooftop and fired her yo-yo, swinging off in the direction that Veritas had traveled when she passed by the bakery. _She couldn’t have gotten far_ , she thought. And sure enough, she had only gone a block before she could hear the sounds that usually accompanied akuma attacks. High-pitched screams wailed, and lower-pitched shouts randomly punctuated the droning noise.

The commotion sounded like it was coming from one block over. Choosing to cut over the rooftops rather than go the long way around them, Ladybug fired her yo-yo at an anchor behind her, changing directions to launch herself upward.

Her feet hit the roof at about the same time as those of her partner’s. She looked up to see, as expected, his easy smirk.

“Evening, m’lady,” he greeted her.

She couldn’t help but smile in return, but she didn’t pause to return the pleasantries. She was Ladybug, and she was all business, ready to discuss the impending fight as the two of them crossed over the rooftop together.

“Chat Noir, do you know anything about the akuma?”

“Dressed in white, has a dazzling personality. That’s all I saw on the news before I left.”

“Right. She’s shooting green bolts and blue bolts at people,” Ladybug explained. “The green bolts are turning its victims into followers of some kind. She’s probably building herself an army.”

“We’ve handled armies before. What about the blue bolts?” Chat asked.

“I… I’m not sure exactly. I saw two people get hit by blue bolts, and they weren’t hurt, but they started arguing with each other afterward.”

“That’s it?”

Ladybug frowned, trying to replay the confrontation in front of the bakery in her mind. “The akuma said something before she fired the blue bolt. It was… It was, ‘Speak the truth,’ I think.”

“So this akuma’s power, aside from being able to build herself an army, is to make people say things that cause them to argue?”

“I guess so,” Ladybug said faintly as she thought about her parents back at home.

“Truth be told, that sounds like a really lame power. Hawk Moth must be totally off his game today. We’ll have this one beat in no time.”

“I hope you’re right, kitty.”

By now, the two of them had crossed the rooftop. Ladybug could see the akuma below with a group of about twenty green-clad soldiers. The akuma pointed her sword at another civilian, and with a flash of green light, her ranks increased by one more.

“The akuma’s in the sword.” Chat said it like it was a fact.

“It’s got to be,” Ladybug agreed.

As she and Chat leapt from the rooftop and onto the pavement below, Ladybug fired off her yo-yo toward the akuma’s weapon. It made a direct hit against the blade, but it merely bounced off; Ladybug had expected that it would, but it was always worth a try.

The akuma seemed coolly unsurprised as she turned in Ladybug’s direction and took in the sight.

“Ladybug, Chat Noir. So good of you to drop by. I am Veritas and after I defeat you, I will make all of Paris a place where the truth is not hidden.”

Veritas made a grand gesture with her sword, sweeping it in a wide circle around herself. In response, the green-clad soldiers took up a defensive formation, a tight shoulder-to-shoulder circle around Veritas.

“If you want to defeat me,” Veritas sneered, “you’ll have to get to me first.”

“If you insist,” Chat said, and he extended his baton and rushed toward the army.

As he approached, Veritas gestured with her sword, and a soldier broke from the circle and flew forward to meet him.

The match was over quickly. Chat dodged and blocked and dodged again before delivering an upward cut that connected with the soldier, sending him flying back in an arc before crashing to the ground.

Chat turned on Veritas again, who responded by sending two more soldiers toward him.

The strategy seemed straightforward. The heroes would simply have to fight through the twenty or so soldiers that Veritas had acquired, and then they could attack Veritas herself.

Ladybug charged toward Veritas, who sent two soldiers flying in her direction, brandishing their swords. She dodged their attacks easily. They pivoted and came back for a second pass, but she was ready for them. They approached her simultaneously, and she ducked at the last moment, allowing their blows to land on each other. She sprang out of the way as they crashed to the ground, dazed.

Suddenly she heard Chat’s familiar voice next to her. “Five down already, m’lady. We’ll be done here too quickly.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” she said, looking over his shoulder.

Chat turned to follow her gaze. Beyond him, one of the recently-defeated soldiers was pushing himself up from the ground. Both heroes assumed a defensive posture, but the soldier ignored them and flew over to rejoin Veritas’ defensive circle.

Chat grunted in surprise.

“Maybe we should try something else,” Ladybug said. “Maybe we can just force our way through her defense?”

In unison, the two of them turned toward Veritas and charged forward. Ladybug fired her yo-yo, aiming for a direct shot at Veritas, but one of the soldiers easily deflected it. Chat wasn’t even able to get within striking distance before five more soldiers broke away from Veritas’ circle to answer his challenge.

Ladybug found herself squaring off against three soldiers while the other two went after Chat.  Ladybug retreated in two bounds, taking up a defensive posture as she landed. She spun her yo-yo into a shield and braced herself for the attack.

The first soldier rushed her at a furious pace, head-on. With impeccable timing, she jumped high and tucked her feet beneath her. The soldier was unable to stop, and he crashed into the wall behind her.

She turned her attention to the second soldier as she landed. She wrapped her yo-yo around his arm and swung him around. When she released the yo-yo’s hold on him, he careened down the empty street.

Ladybug turned to the third soldier, then realized with a jolt that she recognized her. The colorful hair was wrapped up into a tight bun instead of its usual cornrows, but otherwise, there was no mistaking that it was her classmate and friend.

“Mylène?”

Ladybug hesitated for only a split second, but it was a split second too long. Mylène swung her sword with supernatural strength, and Ladybug barely had time to register that the sword felt more like a bludgeon than a blade before she was sailing upward through the air at an alarming rate of speed.

She smacked into a wall, and then came the tingling sensation in her stomach that let her know she was falling. But even though her ears were ringing, she remembered that she had her yo-yo, and she could keep herself from a hard landing. She looked around for a suitable anchor, somewhere far enough away to allow her to change her momentum from falling to swinging.

She had found a target and had just taken aim when she felt the impact, but it was entirely unlike what she would’ve expected. The landing hadn’t hurt. It didn’t feel like the pavement. It was softer but still strong. And somehow, she was still falling.

There was another soft jolt. She wasn’t falling anymore, and she finally understood. Chat had caught her mid-air and had buffered her on the landing.

Another second passed before she realized that Chat was _still_ holding her, despite the fact that it was no longer necessary. Ladybug rolled her eyes and pushed herself out of his arms.

“I _had_ that,” she said with mild annoyance.

“You’re welcome,” he replied with a smirk. He turned toward Veritas with a shrug. “I guess we’re back to our first strategy,” he said. “We just have to move faster this time.”

“Or smarter,” Ladybug said thoughtfully.

She hung back as Chat charged ahead. _There has to be a better way_ , she thought. _If only I could see it._

Just then, Veritas sent two more soldiers after Chat, and Ladybug _did_ see it: her window of opportunity.

She waited for Chat as he faced down the two soldiers. He ducked, parried, and jumped over their attacks until the opportunity came for him to deliver another upward cut to one soldier. He then carried the momentum impressively into a sidelong blow to the other soldier.

The second soldier was knocked over, but she adeptly turned her fall into a kind of cartwheel. Her feet, hoverboard and all, arced through the air, and she turned herself upright again. Chat’s mouth formed a little ‘o’ of surprise before he swung his baton in another upward thrust. It connected with the soldier once more, causing her to go flying the way the first one had.

“Did you see that, Ladybug?” Chat asked with a grin. “ _She_ was head over heels for me.”

“If we’re lucky, you won’t be getting a second date with her,” Ladybug said. “Keep drawing soldiers out from her circle. Then be ready to Cataclysm the sword on my signal.”

“On it, m’lady!”

Ladybug charged toward Veritas again, Chat Noir by her side. As she fought the soldiers that Veritas sent out to counter them, Ladybug planned her attacks and countermoves carefully, edging as close to Veritas as possible with every move.

Once she had dispatched the soldiers, Ladybug quickly lowered her yo-yo and eased her posture.

As she had hoped, Veritas did not seem to mind that Ladybug was close, as long as she didn’t appear to be a threat.

Chat, on the other hand, bounded back toward the circle. Three soldiers left the formation, and Ladybug saw the opportunity she had hoped for. The soldiers had been standing side-by-side in their formation, and when they broke rank, they left a gap in Veritas’ wall of protection. The remaining soldiers began shifting to fill in the hole immediately, but Ladybug was ready.

 “Chat Noir, now!”

She threw her yo-yo toward Veritas through the gap, aiming for the sword hand. The string wrapped around the akuma’s arm, and as Ladybug yanked back, Veritas lost her grip in surprise. The sword went flying from her hand.

Chat was on it in an instant. He leapt downward from Ladybug-didn’t-know-where with his claw outstretched and his cataclysm activated. He caught the sword mid-air and it crumbled into dust, leaving Chat free to roll neatly as he hit the ground. When he came upright again, he was at Ladybug’s side.

“On my feet, as always,” Chat said smugly. Then— “Huh?”

There was no purple akuma flying out from the crumbled ashes that had been the sword, and Veritas had begun a sinister chuckle.

“No, my poor incompetent heroes,” she mocked them. “That is not where my power lies.”

As Chat Noir and Ladybug gaped, a puff of smoke enveloped her arm. When it dispersed, they saw that she was wielding a sword identical to the one Chat had just destroyed.

“The truth is mighty!” Veritas said in triumph. “Soon, it will conquer you!”

Already, the green-clad army had regrouped around her, and now Veritas and her army were advancing as a unit toward the heroes.

Chat Noir’s ring beeped. He’d be forced to detransform soon.

“Uh, keep them busy while I go recharge?” Chat suggested.

Ladybug acted before she spoke. She caught Chat up in one arm and used the other to fire her yo-yo, swinging into a hasty retreat. Behind her, she could hear Veritas’ frustrated shouts that commanded the soldiers to follow.

“I guess that’s a no,” Chat said.

“It’s too dangerous,” Ladybug replied. “There are too many of them for me to keep track of them _all_. If Veritas sent a couple of them to follow you while I was distracted, they might catch you while you were detransformed.”

Chat glanced behind them. “But now they’re _all_ following us,” he said. “How is this any better?”

Ladybug turned her head to look him in the eye. “Do you trust me?”

Chat grinned. “Always, m’lady.”

“I’m going to put you down so we can pick up speed. Stay with me.”

She swung low to the ground, and as she started to swing upward, she let go of Chat. He easily caught his stride, and Ladybug didn’t have to look back to know that he was following close behind. She raced onward, switching directions in quick succession several times.

She heard Chat’s ring beep once, then again, and then once more. She glanced over her shoulder. She couldn’t see Veritas or any of her soldiers anywhere. She paused on a rooftop, and Chat stopped next to her. They were both breathing hard.

She glanced at his Miraculous. There was only one pad left. Time was up.

She looked around for a place that would give them privacy as well as a tactical advantage. The best she could find was an alleyway across the street between two buildings. The buildings were both single-story and had large awnings that stretched across the front and wrapped around the side, extending into the shared alleyway. Against one of the buildings was a large dumpster.

Ladybug leapt from the rooftop to get a better view of the buildings on either side of the alley. One was a clothing store and had no windows on the wall that faced the alley. The other was a dance studio that had a “Closed” sign hanging on the front door.

It would do.

Ladybug turned to Chat, who had followed her from the rooftop. “You don’t have much time,” she said. “I’ll stay here and cover you in case Veritas finds us.”

Chat raised an eyebrow. “How do I know you’re not going to peek?” he teased.

Ladybug gave him a wry look and turned around. “Hurry up, kitty,” she said over her shoulder.

She heard the crunch of footsteps retreating behind her into the alley, and then, from a distance, she heard Chat murmur, “Claws in.” Despite the circumstances, she felt a pinch of nervousness and even voyeuristic guilt at being this close to detransformed-Chat-Noir. She focused her attention keenly on the street in front of her.

Detransformed-Chat spoke again, but his voice was low and muffled, as though he were self-conscious about letting her hear him speak.

His kwami, on the other hand, was loud and clear. “You mean, right _now_?” There was a muffled response, and then she heard, “Did you at least remember the _camembert_ this time? Last time this happened you tried to give me some sort of _processed cheese product_ and it was awful.”

Suddenly Ladybug noticed movement in her peripheral vision. It was coming from inside the dance studio.

_No! The sign said “Closed”!_ she thought frantically. Without conscious thought, she turned her head just a fraction of an inch and snapped her eyes to the side to assess the situation.

Someone was in there. Her eyes took in the clothing, the red shoes, the blond hair…

She gasped. _Adrien_ was in the dance studio. He was right _there_ , and Veritas could be there _any_ moment. She had unintentionally lured an angry akuma to his location.

Her heart beat fast and she nearly followed her instinct to break the window, scoop Adrien up, and carry him away to safety. The only thing that stopped her from acting on that impulse immediately was the fact that it would mean leaving Chat Noir defenseless.

_But what on earth would Adrien be doing in a dance studio?_ , a tiny, logical part of Ladybug’s mind asked. _I know his schedule inside and out, and dance lessons are not a part of it_.

She studied the scene more closely, then, and that’s when she realized that what she saw was not Adrien at all. No, it was Adrien’s _reflection_. The dance studio had floor-to-ceiling mirrors on the far wall.

Adrien wasn’t inside the studio. He was outside it, in the alley. About ten feet behind her. Right about where…

Ladybug’s mouth went completely dry as turned her head away.

_I was wrong. That wasn’t Adrien’s reflection,_ she thought. _It couldn’t have been._ It just happened to be someone Adrien’s height and approximate weight. Someone who had blond hair that was combed and styled just like Adrien’s. Someone who happened to be wearing the same outfit that Adrien had worn to school that day.

She gave up. It _was_ Adrien.

There was another explanation for it though. There had to be. One that didn’t involve Adrien being Chat. Maybe Adrien had been out for a walk. He could have stumbled into the alley from the other direction on accident. Chat was probably hiding right now, waiting for Adrien to leave.

If that were true, Ladybug would probably have to help Adrien get somewhere safe.

Swallowing hard, afraid of what she might see, Ladybug turned her head a fraction of an inch to check the mirror again. Adrien was there, and he was holding something that looked suspiciously like a wedge of cheese in his hand. She didn’t see a kwami at first, but then a black blur snatched the cheese from Adrien’s hand and disappeared from her view.

She swallowed hard and forced herself to look at the street. _This can’t be happening_ , she thought.

She couldn’t help but notice the subsequent flash of green in her peripheral vision, and she knew that Chat Noir was back. She noticed the movement of his reflection as he approached her, but she still jumped a mile when she felt him touch her shoulder.

“Are you ready, m’lady?”

“No! Yes! I mean, ready for what? Oh! To fight Veritas, of course. I’m ready, I’m… I’m very ready.”

Chat Noir frowned. “Are you feeling okay, Ladybug? You seem…” he trailed off, uncharacteristically speechless.

“Yes. O-of course. Me? I’m fine.” Ladybug knew she was nervous-giggling, but she couldn’t stop, and she hated herself for it.

“Let’s get back to Veritas then.” He turned toward the street, gazing out and up as though he was looking for the akuma. “If I’m being honest, I’m ready to get this over with.”

While his back was turned, Ladybug bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. _Focus_ , she commanded herself. _It’s just Chat Noir._

“Me too,” she said finally, and her voice came out mercifully normal in its tone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ladybug is kind of a hot mess as she and Chat Noir team up against Veritas for the second time.

“So much for Veritas being right behind us,” Chat called out.

“We’ll find her soon,” Ladybug called back as she followed Chat through a turn.

_This is normal,_ Ladybug thought. _This is **normal**_.

The small act of traveling through the streets of Paris suddenly felt heavy with meaning. She and Chat had often raced side-by-side, whether it be during an akuma fight or a patrol, and it was always like this. Sometimes she’d be in the lead, and sometimes Chat would be in the lead, and sometimes they would switch off mid-journey. Neither of them ever hesitated to follow the route the other took. It wasn’t something they had ever talked about. It just _happened_ , and Ladybug had never really questioned it.

But now that she knew it was _Adrien_ under that mask, it felt strange and unfamiliar.

Chat came to an abrupt stop on a roof terrace, and Ladybug nearly missed it. She had to make a wide circle to backtrack before she landed next to him. She crouched down beside him, just next to the terrace wall.

“There they are,” Chat said quietly. He was gazing over the wall down into the street below.

Ladybug carefully raised up just enough to look over the wall herself. Sure enough, Veritas was there. It seemed like she had decided to give up her search for them in favor of expanding her defensive line. Ladybug was sure that there were half again as many soldiers as there had been before.

She ducked back down again, preparing herself for a discussion about tactics and strategy, but she was too late. Chat had already jumped onto the terrace wall and was poised to jump again.

“Hey guys!” he shouted down toward the street. “Mind if I drop in?”

“Chat!” Ladybug hissed from her position behind the terrace wall. “We should figure out where the akuma is first!”

Chat looked down toward the street with a small frown, then back at her.

“Good thinking, m’lady,” Chat said. “But it’s a bit late for that now. I’ll distract them while you figure out what to do about the akuma.”

And with that, he leapt off the rooftop.

“Chat Noir,” she heard Veritas bellow. “You will hand over your Miraculous to me!”

“What was that you said earlier?” Chat answered. “‘If you want to defeat me, you’ll have to get to me first!’”

Ladybug raised herself up again, peeking over the edge to the street below. Veritas was encircled by her soldiers again.

Ladybug watched for a moment, and soon noted that Veritas was no longer hanging back. This time, she was actively pursuing Chat Noir. But she was also not sending her soldiers away from her defensive circle as she had the first time. She seemed unwilling to leave a gap in her defense, and so she and her soldiers flew in tight formation, as a single unit.

Chat, in the meantime, was bouncing all over the place, leading them on quite the merry chase. He was on a balcony; then he moved and was perched on top of a street lamp. He leapt to a tree limb, then bounced off one of the soldier’s shoulders en route to a rooftop on the other side of the street.

There was really no other way to describe it: Chat Noir was frolicking. _Adrien_ was _frolicking_.

She had spent a fair amount of time over the past few months watching Adrien very carefully, and she would never have described him as the frolicking type. Was she ever going to get used to this?

He had crossed the street again and was sitting on the rooftop one building over from her, waiting for Veritas to get close before he moved away again. He glanced at Ladybug with a confused frown, and that was when she remembered her job. Her cheeks grew hot and she looked away, squinting at Veritas with renewed focus.

_The akuma’s not in the sword. Where else could it be?_ The magical items were usually the best bet. If it wasn’t in her weapon, it was probably in the hoverboard.

Destroying the hoverboard to release the akuma would be tough. There were so many soldiers around Veritas, and her behavior had already suggested that she wasn’t going to allow any gaps in her defense this time.

So, as quietly as she could, she summoned her Lucky Charm. A pair of scissors fell into her hand. They were much like the ones she used on her sewing projects at home.

She looked down at Veritas’s hoverboard again, and called up the memory of the soldier who had cartwheeled, hoverboard and all, during their previous encounter. The hoverboard was attached to the soldier somehow. She pictured it as clearly as she could in her mind. How was the hoverboard attached to the soldier?

She recalled that there was no seam evident between the soldier’s boots and the hoverboard. It was likely that the boots were one piece with the hoverboard. And how were the boots attached to the soldier? She remembered seeing straps on the boots that went across the feet and legs, similar to a ski boot. Three straps on each boot maybe, or maybe it was four.

And Chat, he was keeping Veritas and her gang up high. Balcony and tree level. She could use that. She wished there were a way to weaken Veritas’ defense, though.

She looked around some more and spied a narrow gap between two buildings up ahead. It wasn’t very wide. Maybe only wide enough for about four people to walk side-by-side.

Ladybug had her plan.

She got up on the terrace wall and crouched low. She was relying on Chat’s help, so she hoped she could catch his attention without attracting Veritas’s.

Soon enough, he turned his head in her direction again, and from thirty meters away, they locked eyes. She pointed at Chat and then to the gap.

Chat looked in the direction of the gap, but then Veritas made another advance on him and he was too preoccupied by his dodging game to look back. But it was okay. Ladybug was sure he understood.

She leapt off the rooftop and hit the ground on the softest feet she could manage. Chat was still playing with Veritas, but she could tell that he had drawn her closer to the gap and was only drawing her closer.

Ladybug sprinted into the gap and hid herself in the shadows.

Chat landed on a high windowsill that faced toward the gap, then to another windowsill several meters further in. Ladybug watched in anticipation.

As she had hoped, Veritas’s circle of guards was too large to squeeze into the gap in its current formation. The army reacted quickly. Soldiers peeled off as Veritas entered the gap, leaving Veritas’s circle smaller but unbroken. The soldiers who had been unable to join Veritas in the gap flew up above the building and shadowed her from there, ready to descend at a moment’s notice.

Ladybug fired her yo-yo and it wrapped itself around Veritas’s hoverboard, right between her boots. She reeled the string in, pulling herself up until she was able to throw one arm around the hoverboard.

Veritas was caught off guard, buying her a few seconds of time.

She moved quickly, clinging to the hoverboard with her one arm while she quickly snipped at the straps on one of Veritas’ boots. With two more snips, the last of the straps on the boot came undone. The hoverboard lurched slightly as the boot slipped down Veritas’s foot. Ladybug shifted her weight and the boot slipped off entirely.

Veritas lurched awkwardly from side to side.

Suddenly, soft white fabric was hitting Ladybug in the face as Veritas struggled to catch her balance. The fabric obscured Ladybug’s vision, and she brushed it impatiently aside. As she regained her bearings, she saw Chat out of the corner of her eye. He was near her now, fending off a couple of soldiers who were trying to get to her.

There wouldn’t be much time. Working quickly, Ladybug slid the blade of the scissors underneath two straps at once and snipped.

Veritas snarled and suddenly changed directions. It only took a second before Ladybug realized that Veritas was hurtling herself downward, probably in an effort to dash Ladybug against the ground. Willing herself not to panic, she slid the blade of the scissors under the last two straps and snapped them closed.

Ladybug and the hoverboard went tumbling to the ground, but not before colliding hard mid-air with Chat Noir. All three of them landed on the ground in a jumbled heap.

Ladybug braced herself, fully expecting Veritas to crash down on top of her. A second later, when nothing had happened, she rolled over from her stomach and onto her back. She opened her eyes and looked overhead.

Veritas wasn’t falling. She was being carried away to safety by two soldiers who each had one of her arms, flanked by the rest of the army. None of them looked back at Ladybug and Chat Noir.

Ladybug rolled her head to one side to take the rest of her surroundings.

The hoverboard lay a half meter away. Surprisingly, it was still intact.

And Chat Noir…

She rolled her head the other way.

Chat Noir had apparently landed beside her. And somehow – it had probably happened when she rolled over to look up for Veritas – somehow, she was laying on his outstretched arm. He was grinning at her with _that_ grin. _Adrien_ was grinning at her with _that_ grin.

She rolled back away from him as quickly as if he were an open flame, staring at him wildly as she jumped to her feet. “I… uh… I’m sorry… I mean, I didn’t…!” she squeaked. She pointed at the hoverboard. “The akuma!”

Chat’s attention was successfully diverted.

“I’m surprised the hoverboard survived that landing,” he said, getting to his own feet. Then, with a swipe of his Cataclysm-activated claw, the hoverboard disintegrated.

A second passed, and the two stared in disbelief.

“No akuma,” Ladybug finally said, and the words were half a statement and half a question.

“We’ll just have to try again,” Chat said with a shrug. “Third time’s a charm, right?”

The Ladybug Miraculous beeped a warning, reminding them both that their transformations were going to wear off. Ladybug touched her earrings and shot a nervous glance at Chat Noir.

“We’d better go,” Chat said. “At least Veritas is out of commission this time.”

“R-Right. That’s good. We… ah… we shouldn’t be near each other when we… when we…”

She couldn’t quite bring herself to say _detransform_ aloud. Not when she thought about who Chat would _be_ when he detransformed.

“So, I guess, soon I’ll see you? I’ll—uh—see you soon.” Ladybug turned quickly, ready to fire her yo-yo and swing away.

“Hang on.”

She knew she should probably pretend she hadn’t heard Chat, but against her better judgment, Ladybug turned to face him. He had stepped closer to her, and now he was taking another step closer still. His hand was extended toward her. Toward her face.

Ladybug leapt back, tripped over her feet, and fell over backward, hitting her head hard against ground. She groaned and pushed herself up to a sitting position. She rubbed the back of her head and wished that she could just melt right into the asphalt.

Chat extended a hand to her with a bemused expression on his face. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right, m’lady?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She took his hand without meeting his eye and pulled herself back up to standing. Then she quickly released his hand and touched her head gingerly. “It isn’t the worst injury I’ve had.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He shook his head. “I mean, you’ve been acting kind of strange ever since we went to that alley.”

“What? No. I feel fine. Everything is just— just fine.”

“Then why are you acting this way?” Chat asked. A thoughtful look crossed his face, and he squinted his eyes at her. “Actually, you kind of remind me of someone.”

“No! No, I don’t! I—That’s silly!” she stammered. Warning bells were going off in her head, making it hard to think.

In the moment, logic had nothing to do with her determination to keep her identity secret from him. It was more that she hadn’t had a chance to think about it since the moment she had found out _his_ identity. She was following her habits, and it was little more than a knee-jerk reaction when she found herself looking for a distraction.

And she certainly _did_ have a distraction on her mind. Her brain fumbled the thought into place, and her lips began to form the words. At the last split second, she realized exactly what was she was about to say and had the strange, distant feeling that it would only lead to trouble, but it was too late.

So she blurted it out: “I’m in love with you!”

She gasped and clamped both hands over her mouth and her eyes went wide in terror. She stared at him, and he stared back at her, and for a few long seconds it was nothing but fear (hers) and shock (both of theirs).

Then suddenly, there was his easy, flirty grin. “I always knew you’d come around, Bugaboo,” he teased.

A moment passed, and then his smile softened, just a bit. He took a step toward her and reached toward her face again, and Ladybug dropped her hands from her mouth, feeling both eager and terrified about what might happen next.

When his hand was close enough for her to feel its heat on her cheek, she closed her eyes. Quite unexpectedly, she felt him gently tugging on her hair. She opened her eyes and saw him withdraw his hand. He was holding something green in it.

“You had a leaf in your hair,” he said with a wink. And then, quite suddenly, he gave his baton a spin and then propelled himself away.

“We’ll meet back on the rooftops here soon, okay?” he called.

Then he was gone, leaving Ladybug standing there with clammy hands and her heart beating a thousand times a minute.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI, the author notes at the end contain Season 3 spoilers.

Adrien sat on a bench, hunched over with his elbows on his knees. His fingertips were pressed together around the stem of a green leaf, which he was staring at intently. Staring at, without really seeing. He was preoccupied with the memory of the way it had looked nestled in Ladybug’s hair. How it had looked as he slid it out of her hair. Of how _she_ had looked as he slid it out of her hair: her face tilted up toward him, her cheeks flushed, her eyes fluttering behind closed lids, and her lips parted ever so slightly.

A thrill shot through him, and his stomach lurched so intensely that it was painful. Those weren’t butterflies in his stomach; those were fireworks.

He set the leaf down carefully on the bench with a trembling hand, then stood and began to pace. He clenched and opened his fists several times as he walked, flexing his fingers and trying not to get swept away in the tide that threatened to wash him away.

_She said she loves me!_

Plagg sat on the bench watching him with a smirk as he nibbled on a piece of cheese with anxiety-producing slowness.

“Can’t you eat a little faster, Plagg?”

“There’s no rushing the enjoyment of a fine cheese. Besides, what’s the use? You’re just going to make me transform you _again_. How many times is that today?”

“Three so far. But it’s for a good cause.”

“It is? Are you talking now about defeating Veritas, or are you talking about getting to spend some more time with your lady love?”

“Both.”

Of course, it was vitally important that Veritas be stopped. Of course it was.

But at the moment, that importance paled in comparison to his desperation to see Ladybug again. Desperation, but also a little bit of terror. This was brand new territory, after all. Despite the amount of flirting he routinely did, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t nervous about what would come next. The first hand-holding, the first kiss, the first—

Plagg’s voice interrupted Adrien’s reverie, garbled by the mouthful of cheese which he had not finished chewing.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of strange that she declared her love for you _now_? Just yesterday, she was rolling her eyes at your awful puns and pushing you away every time you got close. What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Adrien admitted. He’d wondered that himself. “But it was real. I saw the look on her face.”

Plagg made a far less pleasant face of his own.

“It’s enough to make a kwami puke,” he said, before taking another bite.

  *** * ***

Ladybug stumbled out of the alley with all of its open windows and threw herself behind a hedge. Her Miraculous beeped one last time, and Tikki flew out of the earrings.

Marinette didn’t see where Tikki landed. She was too busy laboring over her breathing and covering her face with both hands. She wished that she could blot the redness out of her cheeks instead of merely hiding it.

“Marinette?” Tikki sounded concerned.

Marinette slowly slid her trembling hands down her face so that she could peek at Tikki between her fingers. Tikki was staring at her with a curious expression.

“Tikki,” she said, taking a deep breath that she hoped would calm her heartbeat and the rollercoaster ride that her stomach was taking, “I just told Adrien that I love him.”

Tikki blinked, and Marinette spoke into the silence that followed.

“I just told _Adrien_ that I _love_ him. I can’t believe I did it – I mean, I didn’t plan to – but at least it’s out there now, right?” Marinette was aware that she was gushing. She knew that she probably shouldn’t be, but there was no stopping herself. She was ricocheting between feelings of euphoria and alarm like a pinball, and she felt both of them viscerally.

“That’s not quite true, Marinette,” Tikki finally said. “Marinette didn’t tell Adrien she loved him. Ladybug told Chat Noir that _she_ loved _him_.”

Tikki’s words cut to the heart of the matter, slicing right through Marinette’s giddiness along the way.

“They— we— we’re the same people,” she said thickly. Which was true, of course, except she immediately caught on to Tikki’s meaning: Adrien wasn’t going to see it that way. Not unless…

“Tikki, you’d understand if I told Chat my identity _now_ , wouldn’t you?”

“Of course, I’d understand,” Tikki assured her. “But do you think telling him is really the right thing to do?”

There was no judgment in Tikki’s eyes or face, but Marinette knew what her kwami was probably thinking. Worse yet, Marinette knew she was right.

Keeping their identities secret was an important strategy for keeping themselves safe from Hawk Moth. Tikki had explained that at the beginning. As two young teenagers fighting against what they all assumed was a fully-grown man, their civilian selves were very likely to be vulnerable.

Marinette had once asked why she couldn’t tell _Chat Noir_ her identity. If she was supposed to trust him in a battle, couldn’t she trust him with a secret? Tikki had replied that if Hawk Moth ever chose to target the Miraculouses indirectly by targeting the holders themselves, then they might end up being very grateful for the extra layer of security that came from not being able to name each other’s civilian identities should one of them be captured.

“No,” Marinette said resignedly. “You’re right. I can’t put Adrien _or_ myself at that kind of risk.”

Tikki broke the silence that followed gently.

“I need to eat so we can recharge. We’ve got to capture the akuma,” she said.

“Right. Right. There’s a cookie in my purse.” Marinette opened her purse and rummaged through it, pulling out the treat and offering it to Tikki.

“Is there any chance you can get more?” Tikki asked.

“Sure! The bakery’s not far,” Marinette replied, trying to sound bright. She opened her purse and Tikki slipped inside.

Marinette stood then, knees still feeling a little weak, and took off in the direction of her home. She walked quietly for a moment, but then—

“Tikki, should I tell Chat that I know _his_ secret identity?”

Tikki stuck her upper body out of the purse and spoke between bites of her cookie.

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Well, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it just doesn’t feel right that I should keep it a secret from him.”

Tikki didn’t answer right away, and Marinette had to continue.

“And also, if Chat suddenly gets serious about Ladybug now, my chances of dating Adrien as _Marinette_ anytime soon are probably gone now.”

“Maybe so, but I bet your chances of dating Chat Noir are pretty good.”

“ _Chat_?” Marinette couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice.

“You just told him you love him,” Tikki reasoned.

“I was thinking of _Adrien_ when I said it,” Marinette said. “I couldn’t actually date _Chat_. Chat never takes _anything_ seriously, with his puns and his swaggering and his flirting. And he’s so full of himself! Adrien… he’s different. He’s sweet, and well-mannered, and _Tikki, why are you laughing?_ ”

“They’re the same person, you know,” Tikki giggled.

“It’s not funny,” Marinette insisted with a groan. “I’m having a crisis here.”

It wasn’t Tikki who answered.

“Marinette is having a crisis? Why am I not surprised?”

Tikki quickly retreated into Marinette’s purse at the unexpected voice. Marinette whipped around to see Alya standing in the doorway of the entrance to her apartment building. She had her phone out with its camera pointed toward the rooftops. She wasn’t looking at the screen though. She had her head twisted to look toward Marinette.

“Alya, I didn’t see you!”

“I’m sure you didn’t.” Alya pressed a button on her phone before slipping it into her pocket and crossing her arms in front of her with a smirk. “You were too busy talking to yourself again.”

Marinette managed a small laugh. “I can’t stay right now, Alya. Akuma attack, you know. Mom and Dad want me home.” She gestured toward the bakery.

“Aren’t you even going to ask how the movie was?”

Marinette was too surprised to do otherwise. “Um, sure. How was the movie?”

“It was good. Rose and Juleka loved it. It was too scary for Mylène though. But then, you’d know that if you had actually gone yourself.”

 _Myl_ _ène_. Marinette had seen Mylène not long ago. She was with Veritas. And if Veritas had gotten to Mylène, then maybe…

“I’m starting to wonder, Marinette, if it’d be better for us not to call each other friends anymore.” Alya said it casually, but she had her eyes fixed on Marinette appraisingly.

Marinette knew she shouldn’t be engaging with Alya like this. She knew that Alya wasn’t herself. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to simply turn and run from Alya’s piercing stare.

“Of course we’re friends, Alya. We hang out all the time.” She took a step backward.

“We hang out all the time, sure. We hang out, and I listen to you talk about _Adrien_ constantly.”

Marinette flushed. “We do a lot of other things besides that, too.”

“Oh?” Alya raised an eyebrow. “Remember how you were going to rearrange your schedule so you could come to the movie if Adrien was going to be there? You didn’t do that when it was just going to be us girls.”

“It was kind of a joke,” Marinette protested. “I really had promised my parents I would help them in the bakery.”

Alya snorted, and Marinette knew how weak she had sounded.

“Speaking of Adrien—” Alya began.

“I thought you didn’t _want_ to speak of Adrien,” Marinette countered.

Alya ignored her.

“Speaking of Adrien,” she began again, “what’s the deal with you and him? Are you ever going to tell him how you feel?”

“Well, uh—” Marinette stopped, reminded of the events between her and Chat Noir just a few moments earlier. She could not, of course, tell Alya about _that_.

Alya picked up steam again, seemingly energized by having found a new reason to pick at Marinette.

“I mean, seriously. If you like the guy, just tell him, or ask him out. Just _do_ something about it.”

The words were something Alya might say under normal circumstances, but Marinette didn’t like the tone she was taking.

“You are so seriously immature,” Alya continued. “Every day, Marinette. Every day you gawk at him as he leaves the classroom. It’s the perfect opportunity to say something. I’ve even tried to tell you exactly what to say! It would take almost no effort on your part, but you just can’t handle it.”

Tears stung Marinette’s eyes. Even though she was certain that Alya was under Veritas’s influence, there was too much truth in her words for Marinette to ignore.

“The first time I helped you with one of your crazy plans,” Alya went on, “I figured you just needed a little encouragement. I’d cheer you on, maybe help you take the first step or something. I thought you would get around to saying what needed to be said, Adrien would react one way or another, and we’d move on. I didn’t realize just how childish you’d be about the whole thing. It’s been what, the whole school year since this started?”

Finally, Marinette came to her senses. She backed up a few paces, then turned and sprinted across the street. She turned at the intersection and ran a block before turning again. She was on a new path to the bakery, albeit a longer one. Fortunately, Alya didn’t pursue her.

Marinette ran the last few blocks to the bakery, and to her relief, she didn’t run into any other acquaintances.

She did, however, observe that she was not the only one being subjected to Veritas’s damage.

A woman stormed down the street angrily. Two young children trailed behind her, sobbing loudly. “It doesn’t matter if you’re scared,” the mother spat angrily, not even looking at the children behind her as she spoke. “We _have_ to get home so I can get you fed and get you to bed. Otherwise, you’ll be whining that you’re hungry, or crying tomorrow because you’re tired. And _I_ need a break. So shut up, or you’re going to lure the akuma back here, and this time she’ll do something even worse.”

A little further ahead, Marinette heard a violin scratching out a tune through an open window. There was a particularly painful squeak, and then a voice swore loudly. “I keep telling you, change the angle of your bow. You’ve been working on this technique for months, now. I’ve taught five-year-olds who mastered this faster…”

When she got to the bakery, she used the side entrance to bypass the storefront. But before she headed up the stairs, she heard the sound of angry voices. She hesitated tentatively by the door that opened into the bakery, listening.

“—never wanted to work in a bakery, Tom. That was your dream, not mine.”

“You made a choice, Sabine. It’s not my responsibility to read your mind. If you don’t like working in a bakery, go find another job.”

Against her better judgment, Marinette cracked open the door and peeked inside. Her parents were standing face-to-face. Her father had one hand on the counter, propping up some of his weight as he leaned in toward her mother. Her mother had hands on her hips and was boldly drawn up to her full height, her chin raised defiantly.

“But then who will take care of the books?” her mother was saying. “You? You can’t even manage our family well. What makes you think you can manage a business?”

“I’ll _find_ someone to help,” her father retorted irritably. “And what exactly do you mean, ‘can’t manage our family well’?”

“Your _daughter_.” Her mother said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “She’s constantly disappearing. You can’t imagine how worried I get every time I think she’s up in her room, only to find out she’s missing. _Again._ ”

“And how is that my fault? If Marinette is always leaving the house, maybe it’s because she doesn’t want to be around you! Which is exactly how I feel right now!”

Marinette saw the hurt flash across her mother’s face before it stiffened into an expression of resolve.

“Okay, Tom. If that’s how you feel, then I’ll go.”

“Good.” Her father turned his face away, and now Marinette could see the hurt in his eyes too. She did not like what her mother had implied when she said she would leave, so out of desperation, she coughed loudly and walked in the room, trying to pretend she hadn’t heard anything up to that point.

“Hi, guys!” Her voice was a little too cheerful.

“Marinette!” her mother scolded. “I’ve been worried sick about you. I went to your room to check on you and you were gone! What are you thinking, leaving the house when there’s an akuma attack going on out there? And is your homework done? Why are you always acting like such an irresponsible child?”

“Sabine, stop!” her father scolded. “Can’t you just be glad that your daughter is safely home?”

“Yes. It means I can tell her good-bye before I go.” Sabine stalked past Marinette toward the door to the stairs.

Marinette stood uncomfortably and watched as her mother ran up the stairs. She turned toward her father and took a few steps in his direction. “Dad?”

“Go to your room, Marinette. Try to stay there this time; do you think you can manage that? Your mom’s right, you know. If you could show a little more responsibility…”

Marinette turned and fled up the stairs to her room.

When she reached it, she flung herself on her chaise lounge and scrubbed her face with her hands, immensely overwhelmed. Tikki emerged then from her purse.

“Marinette?” she said tentatively.

“Just a minute.”

Tikki helped herself to a cookie from the stash in Marinette’s desk, then settled next to Marinette on the lounge.

“I’m not sure I can do it, Tikki.”

“Do what?”

“Be Ladybug. Leave my room. Face Chat. Face anyone.”

“Marinette, I know you’re really hurt right now, but you know that giving up isn’t going to make anything better. People need you to be Ladybug right now because they need you to defeat Veritas. They need their hero.”

“I can’t be a hero now. Didn’t you hear Mom and Dad? They’re fighting because of me! And you know that Veritas’s power is to make people speak the truth. Maybe if I were around more often, Mom wouldn’t be leaving right now.”

“Marinette,” Tikki said earnestly, “do you really think your Ladybug-related absences are the only thing your parents could fight about?”

Marinette looked up at Tikki. The kwami continued.

“Your parents can find plenty of things to disagree about if they really want to. If it weren’t your actions, it would be the bakery or something else like the way the house is decorated. Most of the time, your parents have been able to overlook those issues or to bring them up to one another respectfully, and to forgive each other when they haven’t. It seems like Veritas’s power has taken away their will to do that. And it’s the same with all those people out there. Everybody is expressing every criticism that could possibly cross their mind, and the damage that they’re doing to each other won’t go away unless you go out and stop Veritas!”

“But aren’t I too late?” Marinette asked. “Does it really matter if I stop Veritas now? Because even if people stop saying these things to each other _now_ , it won’t take back what’s already been said. People will still feel the pain that has already been caused.”

“Maybe,” Tikki said slowly. “But maybe not.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been around for thousands of years, Marinette. I’ve seen some pretty amazing things. Ladybug’s power to restore damage isn’t limited to the physical.”

“Are you saying that my cure will somehow cause people not to feel the hurt caused by the words others have said to them?”

“It might. Or it might cause everyone to _forget_ those words altogether. It might—” Tikki looked at Marinette anxiously. “It might even erase everyone’s memories from the moment the akuma took hold.”

There was a moment of stunned silence while Marinette took that in.

“Isn’t that overkill though?” she finally asked.

“Maybe, but it’s the simplest solution if you think about it.” Tikki pressed on quickly. “But keep in mind, Marinette, that I said _maybe_. Nothing is certain. The Ladybug cure can be difficult to predict sometimes.”

“If it’s true, though,” Marinette said slowly, “then you’re saying I’ll forget about Chat’s identity. And _he’ll_ forget that I told him I love him.”

“Maybe,” Tikki agreed. “Do you think that would be so bad?”

Marinette thought of Adrien, and then of Chat. “No,” she finally said. “Maybe not.”

* * *

Finally, _finally_ , Plagg downed the last of his cheese and let out an indelicate burp. Adrien sprang up from the bench and was about to bellow his transformation phrase when Plagg cut him off.

“I think I’m going to need more cheese before I can help you out.”

“Really?” Adrien frowned. “That was the last piece.”

Plagg shrugged. “Can’t help it. I’m hungry.”

Exasperated, Adrien held open one side of his shirt so that Plagg could hide inside. “Fine. Let’s go home.”

He turned toward the mansion – visible from where he stood a block away – but he didn’t make a move toward it.

“Plagg, are you sure you can’t transform me? At least for long enough for me to get back in through the window?”

“Dead sure,” Plagg said lazily. “My cheese requirements increase exponentially the more times you try to transform in a single day.”

Adrien doubted that this was true, but arguing with Plagg was not his idea of a good time.

Adrien looked at the mansion again. He hated the idea of walking through the front gate by himself. For one thing, if he were caught, it would certainly raise some eyebrows. He wasn’t supposed to just casually come and go through the front gate without his bodyguard. For another thing, one of the eyebrows that would be raised would be his father’s. His father didn’t have time for meals or casual conversations, but he did make time for lectures regarding Adrien’s behavior.

Adrien didn’t have the time or desire to get caught up in a lecture right now. He needed to get back to Veritas. To Ladybug.

Adrien turned around.

“I changed my mind, Plagg,” he spoke to the kwami who was still hidden in his shirt. “We’ll have to find you food somewhere else.”

“I don’t need _food,_ Adrien,” Plagg corrected him. “I need _camembert_.”

Adrien shook his head and didn’t answer.

He rounded a corner and was startled to see Nathalie coming toward him. She was close, far too close for her to have not seen him. She looked surprised. In a brief passing thought, Adrien noted that it might be the first time he had ever seen emotion on her face.

“Adrien, what are you doing out?” Her eyes were sharp but her voice was as impassive as ever.

“I’m getting some fresh air.” He tried to smile casually. Nathalie was unimpressed.

“You shouldn’t be out,” she scolded. “One of Hawk Moth’s villains is on the loose.”

Adrien feigned surprised. “Really? I had no idea. Well, I’ll just turn around and go home then.” He turned, but Nathalie kept talking.

“You have no business being out on the streets without your bodyguard, Adrien. Your father tries so hard to protect you. It’s ungrateful for you to flout his authority and sneak around behind his back.”

Adrien turned, speechless. He had sensed Nathalie’s disapproval of some of the things he had done before, but she had never criticized him. It wasn’t part of her job description. She was allowed to direct him, to give him orders under his father’s authority, to report to his father if and when he stepped out of line, but it was not her job to correct his behavior. Especially not like this.

Nathalie met his gaze with a cool one of her own. She folded her arms in front of her. Adrien suddenly felt very small.

“Your father is under a lot of stress. Just his work is enough. He has to meet deadlines, maintain the quality of his work, keep up his reputation with his colleagues. On top of that, he still misses your mother very much. Why are you adding to his problems?”

“I- uh- I didn’t know- I didn’t think-” He was entirely unsure of what he should say, but he could feel resentment building inside.

“That’s right, Adrien. You never think about anyone but yourself. Have you ever tried to think about it from your father’s perspective?”

“I _have_ tried, Nathalie. And if he’d spend more time with me, maybe I’d have a better idea of what that perspective is.”

“I don’t think your dad ever wanted to be a father, Adrien. And now, he’s not just a father but a _single_ father. He’s doing the best he can, given the situation he’s been placed in. You might consider that next time you are deciding whether or not to give him grief.”

Adrien felt like Nathalie had just pulled the rug out from under him. The ideas behind Nathalie’s words hit him as if they were physical blows. Unwanted. An unfortunate _situation_. He blinked back tears that were suddenly threatening to fall.

He turned from her and raced back to the mansion on foot. He’d already been caught outside, so there was no reason to stay away now. He scrubbed at his eyes angrily as he approached the gate, determined not to let anyone see evidence that he’d been crying.

He punched in the security code and the gate swung open. He ran up the stairs in front of the house, taking them two at a time, and pushed the door open with more force than was strictly necessary. He thought he heard footsteps on the stairs, and for one awful second, he thought his father might be coming out of his office to see what was going on. He didn’t want to see his father.

He sprinted straight to his room and slammed the door shut behind him. As soon as it closed, Plagg was out of his shirt, looking at him wide-eyed with concern. Adrien ignored him and stalked past him. He was aware that Plagg was following him.

He rummaged through a drawer.

“Ignore her,” Plagg advised. “She probably got hit by Veritas and now she’s just saying stuff. She probably can’t help it.”

Adrien found a wedge of camembert. He threw it over his shoulder toward Plagg, never bothering to turn around to see if it had been caught. He flopped onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling.

“Ladybug said Veritas’ power is to make people tell the truth,” Adrien said flatly.

He heard the kwami chew for a few moments before he finally replied.

“It’s going to be okay. You and Ladybug will beat Veritas, and then Ladybug will fix everything. She always does.”

Adrien turned just slightly to speak to Plagg over his shoulder. “Ladybug’s cure will make Veritas’ victims stop saying the things they’re saying, but that’s not just going to fix everything.”

Plagg did not respond.

* * *

Ladybug swung through the streets of Paris feeling both anxious to meet up with Chat and worried about what would happen when she did.

She couldn’t delay it. Veritas was far too much of a threat be allowed free reign over Paris while Ladybug sorted out her feelings about Chat-Adrien.

But she wasn’t ready to meet him again. Not _yet_. It wasn’t that she worried that she might make another starry-eyed mistake. For one thing, she was watching her step carefully, still reeling from the last blunder. For another, she couldn’t _afford_ to make one; Veritas had to be defeated, and soon.

But she could only imagine how Chat was going to act when he saw her, and what was she going to _do_? Trying to rebuff him _now_ would be decidedly awkward and not necessarily in her own best interest. But to pretend that she had romantic feelings about him yet would be disingenuous.

If only Tikki had been able to say for a _fact_ that their memories to be erased. That would make this far less nerve-wracking.

It wasn’t long before Ladybug spotted Chat on the same rooftop where they had paused before their prior battle with Veritas. He was leaning forward against the terrace wall, staring down into the street at nothing Ladybug could see.

She landed lightly behind him, but her feet still made a telltale scratching noise when she hit the tile. Chat didn’t move.

She took a few steps toward him. “I’m here. Are you ready?”

In an instant, everything changed. Chat’s posture became upright. He whipped his baton out from behind his back as he whirled around, and before she could blink, he had extended it partway, with one end resting against the ground and his hands stacked on top.

“I am now,” he said with his trademark grin. “Good to see you, m’lady.”

The lie was immediately obvious to Ladybug. She supposed most people wouldn’t notice it, but to her eye, he was stretched tight like a patch on a garment that had shrunk in the wash and was now pulling against the threads that bound it. His posture was too stiff. His arms hadn’t completely relaxed their weight into the baton. The smile that twisted his mouth had indeed reached his eyes, but only in an _almost_ -convincing way. There was nothing genuinely Chat-like about it.

She hesitated for a second. On one hand, she didn’t want anything to slow her down from finding Veritas and reversing the akuma’s damage. On the other hand, he was hurting, and she hated to see him hurt. Her fear and worry diminished to nothing in the presence of her desire to help.

She stepped up to the wall next to him.

“You’re not fooling me,” she said. “Something’s bothering you.”

Now she was the one leaning forward against the terrace wall, looking at Chat with earnest concern.

Chat’s pose melted into a look of surprise, and then one of internal conflict. He seemed to be wrestling with a decision on his part.

Finally, he retracted his baton and put it back in its place behind his back. He turned toward the terrace wall to mirror her posture. When he spoke, his words were directed toward the street.

“I… I ran into someone down there,” he said.

“One of Veritas’s victims?” she guessed.

“Yeah.” And then he was quiet.

“So did I,” Ladybug said finally. “My best friend dissected all my faults for me. And my parents were fighting with each other when I left. It’s bad out there. That’s why we have to go fix it.”

Chat turned a curious face toward her.

“Do you have any idea _how_ the Ladybug cure is going to fix this?” he asked.

“Not for sure. My kwami suggested that it might take everyone’s memories away from the moment that Veritas was akumatized.”

Chat looked thoughtful for a moment.

“I’m not sure if that’s good news. There are some memories I don’t want to lose.” He gave her a meaningful look, but the fact that he wasn’t wearing his typical goofy, flirty expression made Ladybug’s skin prickle, and she had to look away.

“She only said _maybe_ ,” she said quickly. “Maybe it will take a more nuanced approach.”

She pushed off from the terrace, reached for her yo-yo, and opened her mouth to advise that they be on their way when Chat spoke again.

“I ran into… well, someone kind of like a family friend while I was down there.”

Ladybug faltered and lowered her hand, sinking back against the terrace wall.

“You don’t mind if I talk about this, do you?” he asked.

Most of her wanted to say she didn’t mind at all. The rest of her knew that she couldn’t exactly say yes, even if she did.

“Of course not,” she said.

“Good,” he said, sounding relieved. “Because I don’t have anyone I can talk to about it in my normal life. It’s something I would have to keep private from… well, from the people who know me.”

Ladybug fidgeted uncomfortably.

Chat seemed to take her lack of response as an invitation to continue.

“See, in my normal life… How do I say this without giving away too much… in my normal life, I’m expected to keep up certain appearances when it comes to my family. But my father and I…”

No. Whatever he was about to say, and however much she might want to be a listening ear for him, she’d feel like a voyeur if she didn’t tell him the truth. Ladybug took a deep breath.

“Chat, stop. I have to tell you something.”

Chat turned a raised eyebrow toward her.

“I- I know who you are. That you’re Adrien Agreste. I thought you should know that before you said—“

He cut her off. “ _What_? How? How long have you known?”

He standing up fully now, supporting all of his own weight on stiffened legs. He stared at her with wide eyes.

“Not long! I promise. I-I didn’t mean to find out. When you were recharging your kwami back in the alleyway, there was a mirror in the building next to us. I saw movement in the building and I- I didn’t realize what I was looking at until it was too late.”

She saw his face twist before he turned away from her. She waited for an agonizing moment, her eyes trained on him with nervous anticipation.

“I’m still willing to listen if you want—”

“No.” His voice was flat, and Ladybug flinched.

He turned his face to her suddenly, and he was gazing at her with an intense expression.

“Is that why you’re in love with me all of a sudden?” he finally asked. “Because you have a crush on me as Adrien?”

Ladybug had no good response. To answer the question fully would be to risk giving away her identity. After a few seconds of silence, he spoke again.

“Please tell me that you at least _know_ me as Adrien,” he said. “Please tell me it’s more than just a _celebrity_ crush.” His voice and his eyes were both desperate with hope.

“You know I can’t answer that,” Ladybug answered in a small voice. “If I told you, it might give away…“

“…your identity,” he finished. “So I don’t get to know? Even though you know mine?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you.” Her tone pled for him to understand. “It’s just too risky.”

“Yeah.” He looked away again. “Too risky.” There was a sarcastic, bitter edge to his voice that made her stomach drop.

A moment passed, and when Chat spoke again, his voice was grim.

“Let’s go find Veritas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus scene that I ultimately axed, but not without some regret.  
> * * *  
> “Marinette?” Tikki called out from the purse. Marinette didn’t stop or even acknowledge she’d heard Tikki speak. She rounded a corner without slowing down and collided at top speed with Chloe Bourgeois. The other girl toppled over backward, purse and glasses flying as she hit the pavement.
> 
> “Watch where you’re going, Dupain-Cheng!”
> 
> “Chloe!” Marinette squeaked. This was the last person she wanted to see. “Chloe, you should go home. There’s an akuma on the loose!”
> 
> Chloe rolled her eyes. “You can’t be serious. Have you seen this akuma? I have, and it’s absolute garbage. I got hit by some blue light thing, but nothing at all happened to me. Seriously, when are Ladybug and Chat Noir going to manage to get her contained? They’re almost as useless as you are.”
> 
> And then she stuck her nose up in the air and stalked away.
> 
> Marinette looked after her, blinking with amazement. She heard Tikki’s voice from the purse again. “She’s not wrong. She hasn’t changed a bit since Veritas hit her.”  
> * * *  
>  **Season 3 Spoilers Below**  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> .  
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> .  
> .  
> .  
> YES I KNOW. Oblivio gets the gold medal for its take on the "memory wipe after a reveal" trope. I'm okay with that. This won't end exactly the same as that did, but there are enough similarities that I had to mention it.


	5. Chapter 5

Ladybug and Chat Noir were navigating the streets of Paris in silence. They had started at their rendezvous point on the rooftop terrace and then pushed their way outward in a spiral, both looking for signs of the akuma as they went.

There was no exhilaration in the journey this time. Every time Ladybug glanced back at Chat, he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring ahead, stony-faced.

The tension was palpable.

It was ironic, Ladybug thought, that she had just told Tikki that Chat Noir never took anything seriously as if it were a bad thing. If this was what it looked like for him to be serious, she’d much rather have the silliness: the puns, the flirting, and the _joy_.

Ladybug looked over her shoulder as they rounded a corner, and that’s when she spotted Veritas in the opposite direction from the one they were headed. She knew the neighborhood well. The akuma was close to her own home.

“Chat! This way!”

He didn’t look up when she called, nor did he give any verbal confirmation that he had heard, but when Ladybug turned abruptly, he followed right along with her.

They came to a stop in the intersection just outside the bakery, and Ladybug threw an anxious glance in its direction. Through the windows, she could see her mother sitting at a table in the lobby. She scowled toward the scene outside, seemingly oblivious to the impending danger. Ladybug could also see her father just behind, his mouth moving and a dishtowel in his hand being waved emphatically toward Veritas, who was just a short distance up the street. He suddenly threw the dishtowel on the floor and stormed through the kitchen toward the back of the bakery.

Ladybug was dismayed when her mother did not follow. She began to consider how she might draw the upcoming battle away from her home and family.

But before she could come close to working out a plan, she heard Veritas calling to them with a loud, mocking voice.

“Well, if it isn’t the heroes of Paris. Are you going to give up your Miraculouses now, or shall I take them from you?”

Veritas glided toward them on a new hoverboard. It was green instead of white, and Ladybug guessed that she had replaced the one that Chat had destroyed with another taken from one of her soldiers. It was serviceable, but it looked terribly out of place.  Ladybug became dimly aware that there was something else out of place about Veritas’s appearance. The sound of Chat’s voice distracted her before she could place it.

“I’d like to see you try!” he snarled.

With his baton, he propelled himself up and toward Veritas. When he’d reached the maximum point along the arc he was traveling, he pulled the weapon up and swung it toward her.

“Chat, wait!” Ladybug yelled, far too late to make a difference. “We still don’t know where the akuma is!”

Veritas laughed and dodged easily.

“I learned my lesson the last time we met, Chat Noir,” she assured him. “I’m not going to fight you myself. Hawk Moth gave me my army to be a defense, but I think that if I have enough of them, they’ll make a decent offense too.”

She gestured with her sword, and just as before, a group of her soldiers encircled her.

But not all of them this time. Veritas gestured toward Chat, and the dozen-plus soldiers that weren’t part of her guard advanced toward him.

Ladybug raced ahead to take up a defensive position alongside her partner. As she did, she glanced at the bakery again, and with the change in angle, she saw something she had missed before. Next to her mother was a pair of suitcases, and over her arm was a light jacket.

_She’s waiting_ , Ladybug realized. _She’s watching and waiting for the battle to end so that she can leave._

Ladybug turned and set her face determinedly against the oncoming soldiers.

The fighting that ensued was not particularly difficult. She and Chat had, without discussion, spaced themselves out in the narrow street. It was a strategic positioning that was meant to help keep the soldiers from sneaking around them to attack from the other side. And although the soldiers outnumbered them by far, they were disorganized. Their attacks were uncoordinated, and they all seemed too focused on simply getting in a hit to think strategically.

As Ladybug jumped to take down a soldier who had glided upward – not in an attempt to go over their heads, but in his single-minded mission to attack – she glanced over at Chat. She had noticed that her partner’s attacks had been unusually inefficient. His motions were more exaggerated than necessary, the power behind them far greater than usual.

And there was none of his usual banter.

As much as she didn’t want him to be angry, she had to admit that it did have some payoff. The soldiers he knocked back were staying down a little longer than the ones she did.

But, then again, that was the problem. No matter how many times they knocked them back, the soldiers kept getting up, eventually. Chat and Ladybug were so busy trying to knock off the offensive line that she hadn’t even considered how they were going to break through the defensive line for a third time.

_And even if we figure that out_ , thought Ladybug, _we_ still _don’t know where the akuma is._

“Chat,” she called at a moment when they seemed to have more of the soldiers on the ground than currently upright. “We’re not getting anywhere this way. Cover me for a minute?”

A grunt was his only reply, but he edged toward the middle of the street as she retreated back toward the intersection.

She summoned her Lucky Charm and felt a twinge of surprise mixed with frustration when she received the same pair of scissors that she had received in their previous encounter with Veritas.

_Why these?_ she wondered. _What are they **for**? Cutting the straps off the hoverboard wasn’t the right solution._

At that moment, Ladybug saw Veritas glide upward a few meters. Her circle of guards followed, though they stopped just short of Veritas’s height, allowing the akuma an unobstructed view to glower down at Ladybug with narrowed eyes and a curled lip. Ladybug stared back defiantly.

The akuma glided back downward, and in that moment, in the small space between two of her guards, Ladybug caught sight of something white fluttering in the wind.

_The cardigan._

Of course. That’s what she’d noticed as out of place earlier. The color blended well with the white of her armor and sword. But its soft texture and loose fit were inconsistent with the rest of the akuma’s design. Ladybug realized then that the scissors were meant to cut through the fabric to release the akuma.

“Chat!” Ladybug raced forward to rejoin him, holding the scissors in one hand and wrapping her yo-yo around a soldier’s sword with the other. “Chat, the akuma is in her sweater!” With a jerk, she yanked the sword out of the soldier’s hand and it clattered to the ground.

Chat glanced in Veritas’s direction between blows and nodded. “Then we should draw her out into the open where we have a chance of getting to her—” He cut his eyes over toward her with a pointed glare “—so that we can get this over with.”

Aside from letting out a frustrated groan, Ladybug ignored the last part of his remark. But as they backed away from the army, Ladybug noticed that Chat was sweating more than he had any right to be, and that his breathing was noticeably labored.

As they turned and began running toward the fenceline of the plaza beside the bakery, she gave him a sidelong look.

“I know you’re angry,” she said, trying not to sound condescending, “but _try_ to conserve your strength in case we need it for the akuma.”

“I know. You don’t have to treat me like a child,” Chat snapped back.

Ladybug tightened her fist around the closed blades of the scissors and did not respond.

They jumped the fence that separated the street from the park and landed in unison on the other side. Ladybug sprinted to the wide-open center, and Chat wasn’t far behind.

“There’s a problem,” Chat said as they skidded to a halt. “Veritas didn’t follow us.”

Ladybug frowned. Veritas hadn’t followed them? The soldiers certainly had; they were streaming over the fence now, smoothly gliding on their hoverboards in their pursuit.

“Did you see where she went?” she asked.

“It looked like she was turning to go back up the street,” he replied, just as the first soldier was catching up to them. Chat was closer; he turned to meet the attack.

More soldiers were on the way, but Chat had done fine on his own just a few moments ago. So without more than a second of consideration, she fired her yo-yo and reeled herself up to the rooftops.

As her feet hit the rooftop tiles, she heard the tinkling crash of breaking glass, followed by a scream.

She raced to the edge and looked down. She barely had time to catch sight of Veritas entering the broken window of a small restaurant before a soldier she hadn’t even seen collided heavily with her.

Caught off guard, Ladybug stumbled back and reoriented herself. The soldier was too close for her to use her yo-yo, so she grounded her feet firmly and used her fists instead.

As she threw off the first soldier, two more engaged her in combat, and she caught sight of two more rising up from the street below. There was another tinkling crash – another broken window, no doubt.

And that was when she realized that Veritas must be going down the street, casually breaking into buildings where people were huddled for safety in order to build her army.

Ladybug punched, kicked, spun and kicked again. She knew her fighting was impaired due to the tight grip she was maintaining on the scissors. She tried to leverage them by turning the handles outward and using them as a sort of bludgeon. Her success was limited.

She managed to fight off two more of the soldiers, but by then there were five more, and they were all around her.

The first soldier she had knocked down was pushing herself up now.

Ladybug glanced around for an anchor for her yo-yo that might allow her to escape. It had to be something close, and it had to allow her to take a nearly-vertical path out. Her best bet was the rooftop of the adjoining building. But even that was at a less-than-ideal angle, and she didn’t have a clear shot.

From below, there was the sound of more breaking glass.

With a series of well-placed blows, she knocked back two more soldiers. But a third one got a lucky shot that hit her ribcage, and she yelped in surprise.

She turned and kicked the soldier who had hit her; when she turned back around, six more soldiers were approaching. Two swung at her as she engaged a third, and she managed to dodge the first attack but she misjudged her distance from the second and it hit her hard on the neck. Her indestructible suit covered her all the way to her chin, so perhaps it was the psychological impact more than the physical one that caused her to see stars.

It was only for a few seconds, but when she had regained her bearings, she found she was surrounded by more soldiers than she had time to count.

In desperation, Ladybug brought her arm back to swing her fist. Before she could, a hand clamped hard around her forearm. She jerked forward, but she didn’t have much leverage from this angle and the soldier was surprisingly strong.

With a sense of panic, Ladybug realized she was trapped.

From below, there was yet again the sound of breaking glass.

And then a streak of black descended into the melee.

Chat’s first blow was decisively aimed at the jaw of the soldier who held her. She felt the iron grip on her forearm loosen.

Ladybug whirled around and found that the soldier that Chat had struck had collided with the soldiers behind him. The whole lot had been pushed back, and the distance they’d moved was less than two meters, but that gave her all the room she needed to unclip her yo-yo and spin it up into a shield.

She could feel the warmth of Chat’s back near hers, and she could interpret the sounds and sensations well enough to know that he was spinning his baton to create a shield on his side, too.

The soldiers were held at bay, though for how long was anyone’s guess.

Over her shoulder, she heard Chat’s voice:

“Down on three! One, two…”

There was no time to question this; when Chat said “three,” she retracted her yo-yo and crouched down just as Chat brought his baton over his head. He continued to spin it, and he extended it a little more as he did. It drove the soldiers back another quarter of a meter.

“Now!” he shouted. The baton stopped spinning abruptly, and Ladybug saw that she now had a clear shot at the rooftop she had spied earlier. She took it.

No sooner had her feet hit that rooftop than she fired her yo-yo again and swung across the street, determined to put distance between herself and the pack of soldiers she had just escaped. She now stood on the rooftop of College Francoise Dupont.

She looked around expectantly, wondering which direction Chat had gone when he had escaped. It only took a second before she realized that the soldiers on the rooftop across the street were still pressing inward, and she realized that Chat hadn’t escaped at all.

She watched, horrified, as the soldiers clamored inward and jostled against each other like a pack of dogs attacking its prey. Before she could react, there was a flash of green light, and Ladybug knew what it meant: they had taken Chat’s Miraculous.

The soldiers’ frenzy ended instantly, as though someone had flipped a switch. They turned and glided off calmly and in unison. She caught a glimpse of Adrien suspended between two of the soldiers, much like Veritas herself had been when Ladybug had cut the straps off her hoverboard. He was still kicking and struggling, but it was in vain.

Ladybug pushed down the feelings of fear and panic that were blossoming in her chest as she ducked behind the parapet to watch the soldiers’ next move. They glided down the street, seemingly oblivious to Ladybug. It seemed that they needed to be told what to do next. Ladybug figured she was relatively safe for now, at least until they caught up with Veritas.

Ladybug stared down at the scissors in her hand and her mind raced. After what she had just witnessed, she couldn’t envision a single scenario that would allow her to take down Veritas’s army single-handedly. She had to find a way to catch Veritas with her guard down.

She looked around the courtyard for inspiration, when her eyes landed on the closet where the gym equipment was stored.

_Perfect._

* * *

Ladybug waited near the bakery. She had caught a glimpse of Veritas half a block away just moments ago. Her soldiers had been with her, and she was certain the akuma would arrive any second.

“Chat Noir!” she called loudly in a desperate voice. She waited a few seconds, and when there was no response, she called again. “Chat!”

The first soldier suddenly appeared around the corner, and even though she had expected it, Ladybug still flinched in surprise. More soldiers came into view, and Ladybug gulped nervously. The soldiers were like a swarm, traveling in a calm but highly disorganized cluster, and there were _so_ many of them. Veritas’s army had grown at least five-fold since the latest battle had begun.

Finally, Veritas herself glided around the corner, encircled, of course, by her protective guard.

“Did I hear you calling for Chat Noir, Ladybug? He’s is a little tied up right now. Hawk Moth asked me to keep an extra close eye on him.”

A few more soldiers followed Veritas around the corner, including the two who still held Adrien between them. Adrien had stopped struggling, and Ladybug saw a look of surprise on his face. She had to look away.

Veritas laughed haughtily as she, too, took in the sight of Ladybug. “What’s this?” she crooned. “It looks like Chat Noir isn’t the only one who’s tied up.”

It was true. Ladybug was half dangling from the end of a tree branch, which sagged low to the ground under her weight. She was hopelessly tangled up in her yo-yo string, which wrapped several times around her legs, snaking around the tree branch at times, and then wound its way around one of her arms before wrapping around the branch again.

Ladybug struggled against the string, but it would not break. In her free hand, she still grasped the scissors that her Lucky Charm had given her. She wriggled one of the blades under the magical string that bound her, but when she tried to cut it, the string merely flexed around the two blades as though it were made of heavy wire.

Veritas watched Ladybug appraisingly as Ladybug worked the scissors in vain. After a few seconds, she came closer, still surrounded by her guards. She stopped when the closest guard was just out of Ladybug’s reach.

Ladybug slid the blade of the scissor free of the string she’d been trying to cut. She pointed the tips toward the nearest guard and brandished them as fiercely as she could, and Veritas threw back her head and laughed at the feebleness of the threat.

“It turns out that Ladybug is really just a child, and an incompetent one at that. Poor Ladybug.”

“Veritas, stop!” Ladybug cried desperately. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do what Hawk Moth says.”

“But why wouldn’t I want to?” Veritas sneered. “This is Paris as it should be.”

Veritas’s eyes glazed over then. “Hawk Moth,” she said, “you will have your Miraculouses very soon. I will deliver them myself.”

Ladybug dangled helplessly as Veritas gestured with her sword and her guard broke formation and glided away. Veritas came close with her arm outstretched. Ladybug could see a silver ring around her finger now. She realized that it was the Cat Miraculous, albeit in its camouflaged appearance.

The akuma squatted down and reached for Ladybug’s earlobe.

And then, with a smirk, Ladybug flicked her wrist. The magical yo-yo string retracted quickly and neatly, smacking satisfyingly against Ladybug’s open palm as she dropped the short distance from the tree branch to the ground.

Before Veritas could react, Ladybug cut through the short cord that had tethered the end of the tree branch to a protruding section of one of the tree’s own roots. The branch snapped violently upward, and the corners of a volleyball net that had lain hidden on the ground came together in an instant, with Veritas trapped inside.

Within the span of a single breath, Ladybug leapt to her feet, seized the hem of Veritas’s cardigan, and sliced through the fabric and the net simultaneously. Veritas dropped through the hole in the net and hit the ground with a solid thud before lying still.

At the same time, the ugly purple and blue akuma slid out of the cardigan and fluttered lazily upward.

Ladybug spared an anxious glance toward Adrien. She could see him picking himself up from a pile of soldiers who had dropped to the ground when Veritas had, powerless without the akuma’s energy.

There was still work to be done, and Ladybug knew it. She turned away, swiftly capturing the akuma before purifying and releasing it.

When she turned back, Adrien was already beside her. He was squatting down over Veritas’s limp form and gingerly pulling the Cat Miraculous off her finger.

Ladybug watched uncertainly as Adrien slid the ring back onto his own hand. He looked up at her then, and his eyes never left her face as he stood up again to his full height. His expression was completely neutral, and her heart skipped while her stomach plummeted.

On one hand, she wondered whether he was still angry.

On the other hand, she felt in a way like she was seeing him for the first time.

In so many ways, this was a familiar scene: an akuma defeated, its one-time victim lying dazed on the ground. And Chat Noir standing beside her. But this time, it was Chat Noir without a mask, and that reality was beginning to finally hit home.

She’d known for almost an hour now that Adrien was Chat, but the implications were only now beginning to register. When Chat Noir went home after an akuma fight, he went home as Adrien Agreste. One minute he’d throw himself in front of her as a human shield; the next, he’d be going to Adrien’s classes, doing Adrien’s homework, eating meals at Adrien’s table.

What surprised her most was the fact that it didn’t exactly matter that he was _Adrien_. What mattered was that he was a someone, a perfectly normal someone.

As Ladybug stared, Adrien gestured toward the scissors in her hand.

“You’d better throw those soon.” His voice was low and not as hard as she had feared it would be.

She looked down at the scissors and hefted them in her hand, feeling their weight before she looked back up at him.

“Thank you,” she said. He looked confused, so she clarified. “For saving me back there.”

Adrien looked surprised.

“You’re welcome.” He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand as he added, “It’s what I do.”

Ladybug knew it was true. This wasn’t the first time he’d done something like this. It probably wouldn’t be the last. With all of his flippant and over-the-top behavior, she had somehow failed to acknowledge the one thing Chat was really serious about: her.

She’d taken that for granted.

And in that moment, Ladybug realized that Chat didn’t just flirt with her. And he wasn’t just attracted to her either. He _loved_ her. Not just with words and throwaway gestures, but with action and self-sacrifice.

_And when he went home, he would go home as Adrien Agreste._

“Ladybug?” Adrien’s voice was prompting her onward.

She had one chance at this. She couldn’t screw this up. She closed her fist firmly around the closed scissor blades.

“I know. There’s not much time. I’ll throw them soon.”  

She glanced over at the bakery, where she could see that her mother was now struggling to hold the door open with one hip while she wheeled out her two suitcases.

“I’ll throw them soon, and it’ll be for the best,” Ladybug continued. “But if Tikki is right, I may never get the chance to say this again.”

She tried to look at Adrien’s face, but she was afraid she’d lose her nerve. So instead, she focused on the space between them, took a deep breath, and thought of Chat.

“You were right. When I told you that I loved you earlier, I was only really thinking of you as Adrien. It’s not just a celebrity crush though. I know you in our normal lives, and I’ve had a crush on you for a long time. Almost since the day I met you. You- you’re kind, and genuine, and humble, and- and amazing.” She could not bring herself to add _and really, really cute_.

“For the longest time, I haven’t given Chat Noir a chance, or anybody else really, because I’ve been so preoccupied with Adrien. And when I told you that I loved you earlier, I was thinking of all the things I like about that side of you. The Adrien side.

“But today, when you protected me – not just protected me, but sacrificed yourself for me, even though you were upset with me when you did it – I realized that there’s something real in _our_ relationship too. I can trust you in ways I wouldn’t trust anybody else. I trust you with my _life_.

“I know I don’t always act like it, but I like you. It drives me crazy sometimes when you won’t be serious, with your flirting and your punning, but… You make me smile, even if I’m rolling my eyes when I do. I like you. I _love_ you.”

There was not an immediate response. She couldn’t bring herself to look up, too afraid of the expression that might be on his face. There was more, and she was determined to see it through to the end.

“I’ll tell you who I am,” she said.

“Ladybug—”

“No, listen. I want to tell you. If I trust you with my life, I should trust you with my secrets, too. Besides, I understand why you would be upset that I know your identity but won’t tell you mine. I—”

“Ladybug, stop.”

Ladybug faltered, but she did. She instinctively looked up then, and finally met his eye. She was disappointed to find it was still… not blank exactly. _Cordial_ was the word that came to mind. It stung.

“Thank you for saying that. It means a lot to me to know that you understand my feelings. But I don’t want you to tell me your identity.”

“You- you don’t?”

“No. For one thing, I know that keeping our identities secret isn’t a matter of trust for you. It’s a matter of safety, and it’s a risk you’re not comfortable taking.”

There were a few seconds of silence, and now Ladybug was the one who was speechless.

“For another thing,” he continued, and she could see a glint in his eye and the beginnings of a smirk on his lips, “I don’t want you to _tell_ me because I already _know_ you’re Marinette.”

Her jaw dropped. “What? How did you know?”

He grinned, looking pleased by her surprise.

“After I asked you if you knew me as Adrien, I couldn’t help but wonder if that were really the case. I tried to think through the list of girls I know, and that really isn’t a long list. The only girl I could think that fit what I knew was you. Then when I noticed the way you keep looking over at the bakery just now and… well, that kind of confirmed it.”

He paused, then smiled a little wider.

“Besides, I’m not blind. You _do_ look a bit like her. You acted like her, too, after the alleyway.”

Ladybug was still speechless, and she waited, hoping he would say more. He remained silent.

Her earring beeped, and a sour feeling spread through her stomach. If he was silent, it probably meant that there was nothing left to say that wouldn’t hurt her.

She set her shoulders bravely and cleared her throat.

“Okay. I guess I should…” She trailed off, raising the scissors to indicate her meaning. She wholly welcomed the possibility of losing all her memories of the last few awful hours. He probably did, too.

She dropped her hand low, tensing her muscles to throw the scissors to the sky, when he finally spoke.

“Marinette, wait.”

She did.

In two steps, he diminished the space between them to mere inches and put his hands on her shoulders.

“I wish I could tell you all the things I love you about you, too. Ladybug-you and Marinette-you. But _there’s_ _no time_.”

Taken aback by the urgency in his voice and the slightly wild look in his eyes, she found herself reacting more on instinct than anything else. She let the scissors clatter to the ground as she put her hands on his forearms. She could feel the tension of his muscles underneath his skin. Everything in her body was tingling.

He leaned in until his face was very close to hers, then suddenly stopped. She was confused for a moment until she heard him swallow hard and realized with a shot of adrenaline that he was _blushing_.

She wasn’t sure if he had paused out of nervousness or respect.

Whatever it was, screw that.

She slid one of her arms around his back and buried the hand of her other arm in his hair, pulling his face toward her until his lips met hers.

It was awkward at first, a muddle of lips and noses and arms, and neither of them seemed to know how to handle the complex matter of kissing and breathing at the same time. But in fairly short order, they fell into a rhythm that, however inelegant it may be, was uniquely _theirs_. It was comfortable, and it was perfect.

Suddenly, Adrien pulled his face away from hers and wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. Ladybug immediately missed his lips, but she buried her face in his shoulder and breathed heavily, feeling lightheaded and giddy. Every part of her was attuned to the way he felt, his arms tightly around her, his shoulders and back warm and trembling…

No. Not trembling. Not exactly.

She lifted her head and peered up. He was looking down at her with a face glowing like the sun, and he was _laughing_.

She pulled away and took a step back, asking for the meaning of it with a silent stare.

“I’m sorry,” he said with a chuckle. “I just wondered… Did you mean to say you really don’t like the flirting and the punning?”

“I- No- I mean- I…” She clucked her tongue in exasperation. “Not when it gets in the way of an akuma fight! You have the _worst_ timing sometimes!”

He laughed and pulled her close again. “I’ll try to do better, then,” he said. “But I make no promises.”

Ladybug remembered, then, the scissors that were still on the ground, and her stomach sank. No promises. She supposed that was fair.

Her earrings beeped again, and the look that crossed Adrien’s face when he flicked his eyes toward them told her that their time was really and truly up. He unwrapped his arms from around her reluctantly, catching her hand and holding it as she bent down and picked the scissors up.

When she stood, they exchanged a look that needed no words.

He squeezed her hand, and she gave him one last lingering look, trying to memorize everything about this moment before heaving the scissors into the air and crying out, “Miraculous Ladybug!”

The scissors had barely left her hand when she felt him tugging on her arm, drawing her close so that he could wrap his arms around her again.

“You really think we’re going to forget everything?” he said urgently.

“That’s what my kwami said.”

He grinned down at her again.

“Then let’s give ourselves something we can remember,” he said, and his face was so devilishly Chat-like that she wondered why she had never noticed it before.

Just as the Ladybug cure began to wash over the scene, he pressed his lips against hers, and she couldn’t protest. For her, there was nothing but him: his lips and his arms and his breath and his warmth. And she knew it was going to be okay, because _nothing_ , not even the swarm of magical ladybugs, was ever going to make her forget _thi_ -


	6. Chapter 6

The first sensation she noticed was the darkness. But she was indoors, at the cash register in the bakery, and there were still several people in the queue. When did it go dark?

Oh. Her eyes were closed. The bakery thing must’ve been a dream and she had just woken up.

The next sensation she noticed was that of her own weight on her feet and legs. She was standing. She didn’t sleep standing up. No dream. Back to square one.

Next came the sensation of comfortable warmth. Like being wrapped up in thick blankets on a cold night.

 _No, not blankets_ , she reminded herself. She wasn’t in bed, so no blankets. It was… It was a person, their arms wrapped around her in an embrace.

 _But- but who?_ It was too tall to be her mother, too small to be her father.

And – here came the fourth sensation – whoever it was _, they had their mouth pressed against hers in a way that her parents’ definitely wouldn’t be._

Whoever that mouth belonged to seemed to be having roughly the same reaction she was. The kiss – if it could be called one – seemed to be on pause, lips pressed against each other but completely motionless.

Half afraid of what she might find, Marinette pulled back, opened her eyes, and nearly died of a heart attack on the spot. The wide eyes that stared back at her belonged to Adrien Agreste.

Two pairs of cheeks turned red, two pairs of arms flew apart, and two pairs of feet nearly tripped over themselves putting some distance between their owners.

“Ladybug! I- uh- I don’t…”

(Marinette looked down at her clothes. Ladybug, indeed.)

Ladybug responded with a few nonverbal noises. She was staring, which was awkward. She looked away. That wasn’t much better.

“So I take it you don’t remember how we got here either?” Adrien finally asked. She could hardly hear him over the sound of the blood rushing in her ears.

Ladybug shook her head. “A-akuma maybe?”

She looked around and realized that that was probably right. A woman sat on the ground near their feet, dazed. A crowd of people, mainly clustered into two groups, were picking themselves up off the ground. They were dusting their pants and skirts and exchanging confused glances.

She had no _memory_ of it, but Ladybug recognized a post-akuma scene when she saw one.

She looked around, wondering why Chat Noir wasn’t there. Her eyes darted back to the dazed woman, obviously the akuma victim.

“Ladybug!” Adrien’s voice was urgent, and when she turned, he was gesturing toward her ear.

She put a hand to her earlobe. She couldn’t see her earring, of course, but the safe guess would be that she’d be detransforming at any time.

She wavered for a second. “But I can’t—I can’t go. She’s…” She gestured toward the woman on the ground.

“In shock,” Adrien finished. “Yeah, I know. They always are. I mean, so I can imagine. I’ll help her.”

But it turned out that that was entirely unnecessary, because just then, a voice rang out from the crowd.

“Verity? Is that you?”

“Marion?” the akuma victim weakly replied.

“I was just on my way to your house. Oh, Verity!” She knelt down and gently guided the woman to her feet. “Thank you for calling me. Let’s go to my house. Charlotte should have picked up your girls by now. We’ll get some dinner, get your kids to bed, and go from there. One step at a time.” She put an arm around her friend and led her down the street.

Ladybug glanced at Adrien again and wistfully touched her ear.

“I’ve got to go,” she said.

There wasn’t even time to wait for a response. With enormous regret, she zipped up and out of sight.

* * *

Adrien stood there a few minutes longer, watching the spot where Ladybug no longer was and listening to snippets of the conversations that swirled around him.

“Do you know how we got here?”

“No. I was just walking home—”

“—playing with my kid –”

“—eating dinner—”

“ _—_ ninety minutes ago—”

“— _really_ ought to move. We could stay in Belgium with my sister—”

The crowd was already beginning to thin out as people began to make their way down various streets, each headed to wherever they belonged. Adrien supposed _he_ ought to be home, so he headed in that direction.

His father was walking out of his atelier when Adrien came through the front door. When he saw his son, his face hardened and his lips came together in a tight line. Adrien knew better than to be outside without his bodyguard and presumably without permission.

“Where have you been, Adrien?”

“I don’t know, father.” For the most part, it was the honest-to-God truth.

There was a brief moment filled with tension, but then his father nodded, and although the movement was stiff, his face softened just a little. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

He didn’t move after that, and Adrien briefly wondered if he should say something else, but decided there wasn’t really anything more to say. And besides, there was something else pressing on his mind.

* * *

“Plagg, what _happened_ back there?” Adrien demanded to know before his bedroom door had even clicked shut behind him.

“Akuma,” Plagg said, before taking off for the drawer that held the cheese.

“I _know_. But what happened during the fight? Why wasn’t I transformed? How did I end up kissing Ladybug?”

“You got me. Whatever affected your memory affected mine too.” Plagg seemed wholly unbothered by the whole situation.

Adrien flopped on the bed and ran his hands up over his face and through his hair.

 _Ladybug had kissed him_.

But _why_? _How_? He couldn’t even remember hearing about the akuma attack, much less transforming into Chat Noir, so anything was possible. He might’ve shown up to the scene as Chat Noir and detransformed later. He might’ve intentionally revealed his identity to Ladybug, or it might’ve been an accident. Or he might’ve gotten caught up in the akuma fight before he even had the chance to transform at all.

There was no way to know.

Surely Ladybug had not fallen in love with Chat Noir in the space of one fight. The whole thing had taken place in less than ninety minutes. He might’ve believed it if she’d shown _any_ signs of warming up to him at all. But he had figured he still had at least a few weeks’ worth of progress to make before that happened.

He wondered if the akuma’s powers had had something to do with it. But the way he and Ladybug had been holding onto each other suggested that neither of them had been coerced or had even had the slightest misgivings about it. And it had to have happened at the _end_ of the battle, which Ladybug had obviously won. And if she had won, then _she,_ at least, had to have been in her right mind.

There was a third option. One that made his head spin. One that made him sit upright and breathe shallowly.

“Plagg,” he gasped. “Maybe Ladybug is in love with me! Adrien-me!”

Plagg, who was already curled up on the bed, didn’t even crack an eye open. “Keep telling yourself that, kid.”

* * *

Marinette dashed into the house and started up the stairs. She could hear her mother’s voice drifting down.

“—off the phone with my mother. She doesn’t know of any family emergency that would explain it either.”

Marinette hit the top of the steps without slowing down.

“Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!” she called as she raced for the stairs that led to her room.

“Hang on, Marinette!” her dad called after her.

She stopped and turned to look down at her parents’ concerned faces.

“Are you all right?” her father asked. “Your mother and I both… Well, we seem to have lost our memories from the past – I don’t know – hour and a half, maybe? We both suddenly found ourselves in places we didn’t remember going, doing things we didn’t remember starting.”

“So did I! It’s probably akuma-related. We’re all fine now!”

She started hastily toward her room again, then stopped and turned back, feeling a tension in the air she hadn’t noticed at first.

“At least, _I’m_ fine. Are you guys okay?”

Her parents looked at each other as though they were at a loss for words. A beat passed.

And then they smiled at each other.

“Yes, we’re fine,” her father said.

Marinette had the feeling that something important had just happened although she had no idea what it was. But she knew that it was good, and so she didn’t hesitate again before she started bounding back up the stairs, and her parents didn’t call her back.

As she opened the trap door, she could hear their voices below.

“Maybe we should make good use of them and go on a vacation,” her father said. “We haven’t been on one in a long time.”

“A vacation sounds _great_ …”

* * *

Tikki was headed to the cookie stash before her wielder had even shut the trap door. Marinette collapsed to the floor dramatically, and Tikki smiled to herself as she settled down on the lounge holding the giant macaron in her tiny hands.

“Tikki!” Marinette gasped, sitting up quite suddenly. She stared at Tikki with a wild expression. “Tikki! I was kissing _Adrien_! Do you know what this means? Adrien is in love with _Ladybug!_ ”

Tikki’s smile widened as she chewed and swallowed. “That doesn’t surprise me one bit. It’s a good thing, right?”

“A good thing?” Marinette blinked. She stood up slowly and started pacing. “A good thing. You’re right, Tikki. This is a good thing! I can make this work.”

Tikki eyed her warily.

“I mean, it’s going to be hard to find a way to make my uniform look _date-worthy_ , but I like a fashion challenge. I don’t know where we’ll go on dates or how we’ll keep it out of the public eye, but we’ll figure something out.”

“Marinette—”

“Oh, but Tikki, what about _later_? When we’re older? How will we—”

“Marinette!”

Marinette looked a little shocked by Tikki’s tone of voice. “I was just wondering whether a pet store would actually sell a hamster to a _superhero_ ,” she said.

“Marinette,” Tikki said more gently. “when I said it was a good thing that Adrien loves Ladybug, I didn’t mean that Ladybug should actually date Adrien. What I meant is that if Adrien is really in love with Ladybug, then he’s already in love with Marinette! Maybe all you need is to gather the courage to actually approach him and spend some time with him so that he can see that.”

Marinette stared at Tikki, and Tikki couldn’t quite pinpoint the exact moment her wielder’s eyes started to glaze over again, but when she opened her mouth it was clear that Tikki’s words had not exactly sunken in.

“Tikki, what about…? My uniform doesn’t even have a _zipper_!”

Tikki sighed and shook her head.

* * *

“Don’t be bemused; it’s just the news!

“In a breaking story: Mayor Andre Bourgeois has just signed an executive order that suspends all business and legal decisions that occurred yesterday due to an apparent akuma attack that has left Parisians without their memories. In a statement released moments ago, he states that although preliminary reports suggest that the time period affected by the memory loss only occurred outside of business hours—”

Marinette’s phone rang, and she muted the newscast.

“Hi, Alya.”

“Hey, Marinette. Remember that movie we were going to watch yesterday?”

“Yeah, of course I remember it.”

“Well, _we_ don’t, and that’s the problem. We’re going to go see it again later this afternoon. Are you in this time?”

Marinette looked down at her pajamas and then at the clock. It wasn’t noon yet. There was time to get ready.

“I’d love to!”

“Great! And guess what? Mylene wanted to invite Ivan this time, and Alix suggested inviting Max and Kim and Nathaniel, so I invited Nino and told him he should invite Adrien.”

Marinette froze. She’d been awake until nearly sunrise, talking with Tikki and then mulling over Tikki’s points. Adrien was in love with Ladybug. She was sure of it. And Tikki had made some good points about what that meant for Marinette.

“Okay,” she said.

Alya was silent for a few seconds. Then: “Did you _just_ say okay?”

“I did. I mean, it’s great! I’m looking forward to it. Thanks for telling me.”

“You’re… not going to freak out about Adrien being there?”

Marinette giggled.

“I’m not. What time are we meeting?”

“Two o’clock.”

“I’ll see you then.”

Marinette ended the call.

Tikki, she had decided, was right. Adrien was probably not solely in love with spotted one-piece uniforms and superpowers, and the only other thing Adrien might have seen in Ladybug that he hadn’t seen in Marinette, at least not up close and personal, was confidence.

And believing that went a long way toward givingit to her.

* * *

Marinette walked down the stairs, still dressed in her pajamas.

“Good morning, Mom.”

“Good morning, dear,” her mother said with a smile. “It’s a little too close to lunch for a full breakfast, but I’ll bet you’re starved. Croissant?”

“I’d love one. By the way, my friends are going to the movie this afternoon. I was planning to go with them if that’s okay.”

Her mother nodded as she handed Marinette a pastry. Marinette sat at the counter to eat. Her mother took a seat on the other side and regarded her with a thoughtful expression.

“You know, dear, I seem to recall that we started a conversation yesterday. It was for one of your school projects, remember?”

Marinette wrinkled her forehead as she chewed. She couldn’t think of any school projects she needed to discuss with her parents.

“You wanted to know if I liked working in a bakery.”

Marinette swallowed. “Oh, _that_.”

“Yes. It was important for your homework, wasn’t it?” Her mother’s smile was a little too knowing.

Marinette leaned back in her chair and tapped her pastry absent-mindedly against her plate. “I think,” she said slowly, “you said you like working in _this_ bakery. Which made me wonder if you meant you wouldn’t like working in another bakery. You seem happy here.”

Her mother nodded. “I _am_ happy here. It might surprise you to know, though, that I never envisioned working in a bakery when I was younger. I hated doing anything in the kitchen when I was a child and avoided it as much as possible. And I _never_ thought I could be a morning person.”

“Really? What made you change your mind?”

“When your father decided he wanted to open his own bakery soon after we were married, he didn’t think I’d want to be directly involved, and honestly, he was right. So, he tried to do it all by himself at first. But after a couple of months, it was clear that it was too much for him alone, and he couldn’t afford to hire someone else back then. He finally asked me to help, and after some discussion, I agreed to step in.”

“But you like baking now, right? You’ve been doing it for more than fifteen years or something.”

“What I like about my job isn’t the baking. The tasks of baking, on their own, don’t bring me joy, but it’s only a small part of a bigger picture. Baking is what makes your father come alive. I enjoy being with him when he’s baking, and I love being someone that he can count on. I get to work with my best friend, which is amazing. Plus, working at the bakery allowed me to spend more time with you when you were a child than I would’ve if I’d taken another job elsewhere.

“I’ve certainly come to appreciate baking so much more than I used to. But even if I hadn’t, I think I would still love coming to work every day. I’m a lucky person, Marinette. How many people do you think could say that?”

Marinette smiled. “Not many, Mom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> A few highly self-indulgent remarks:
> 
> 1.) As I mentioned at the start, I wrote the first draft for this story almost a year ago now. I had just binged the first season and a half, and I saw someone mention the idea of Ladybug cure erasing people's memories. I combined that idea with a "create your own akuma" prompt and a "fic where Marinette finds out Chat's identity first" prompt, and gave myself a personal challenge to write something that felt like it could actually be a 22-minute episode of the show, at least in terms of pacing.
> 
> I think I accomplished what I set out to do, and in that sense, I'm happy with the results. On the other hand, the limitations of trying to stick to a 22-minute episode meant that some things were rushed. Some things felt a little "too easy," as one person commented (and I completely agreed with). And since I was trying to maintain a "Season 1" feel to the characters, there are some things that felt like they would work a year ago that don't work quite so well now.
> 
> 2.) In my original first draft, Chat didn't detransform, so their kiss at the end was between Chat and Ladybug. When Oblivio came out, the ending of my fic was too similar to it for my taste and I nearly scrapped the whole fic. A few kind people said they'd read it anyway if I posted it, so I did, but not before coming up with a different take on the ending.
> 
> This version of the ending begs for a continuation much more than my original ending did. I have _ideas_ for such a continuation, but time is an ever-present barrier. Especially when implementing those ideas would require a lot of planning, and I already have a backlog of completely different projects to work on.
> 
> 3.) There have been some people who commented on the first chapter expecting that Chat and/or Ladybug would get hit by the akuma. I would've thought so too if I had jumped into this as a reader. Here's why they didn't:
> 
> The akuma's story was there to represent the extremes in the ways people deal with things they don't like in a relationship. One extreme would be to say nothing at all, never talking anything out and letting resentment build; another extreme would be to constantly criticize and nitpick every single thing that another person says or does. I used cartoonish hyperbole to show the effects of that second extreme by sending Tom and Sabine from being the height of Relationship Goals to the brink of separation in ninety minutes. If the akuma's power tore apart Tom and Sabine's relationship in ninety minutes, I felt like it would be really cheesy and disingenuous to have Chat and Ladybug somehow overcome the akuma's power to get their happy moment. And I wanted to give them their happy moment, dagnabbit. Ergo, no akuma blast for either of them. 
> 
> Once again, thank you for reading!


End file.
